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SAINT ETHELBURGA-S CHURCH. INTERIOR 



HENRY HUDSON 

A BRIEF STATEMENT OF 
HIS AIMS ANI> HIS ACHIEVEMENTS 

THOMAS A. JANVIER 



TO WHICH IS AWDED 

A NEWLY-DISCOVERED PARTIAL RECORD 

NOW FIK8T rUBLISHKD 
OF 

THE TRIAL OF THE MUTINEERS 

BY WHOM HK AND OTHERS 
WERE ABANDONED TO THEIK DEATH 




NEW YORK AND LONI>ON 
HAKPEK & BKOTHEllS PUBLISHERS 

1 9 O 9 






Copyright, rgog, by Harper & Brothers. 

AU rights reserved. 

Published August, iqog. 



CI. A 24r:(i4 2 
AUi 20 1909 



1- 



TO 



CONTENTS 
PART I 

A Brief Life of Henry Hudson . . * \ 



PAGE 



PART II 
Newly-discovered Documents . ♦ . * H? 



PREFA CE 

IT is with great pleaswrc that I incltide in 
this volume contemporary Hudson docu- 
ments which have remained neglected for 
three centuries, and here are published for 
the first time. As I explain more fully else- 
where, their discovery is due to the pains- 
taking research of Mr. R. G. Marsden, M.A. 
My humble share in the matter has been 
to recognize the importance of Mr. Mars- 
den's discovery; and to direct the particular 
search in the Record Office, in London, 
that has resulted in their present repro- 
duction. I regret that they are inconclu- 
sive. We still are ignorant of what punish- 
ment was inflicted upon the mutineers of 



PRE FA CE 



the ** Discovery''; or even if they were pun- 
ished at alL 

The primary importance of these docu- 
ments, however, is not that they establish 
the fact — until now not established — that 
the mutineers were brought to trial; it is 
that they embody the sworn testimony, 
hitherto unproduced, of six members of 
Hudson's crew concerning the mutiny. 
Asher, the most authoritative of Hudson's 
modern historians, wrote: ** Prickett is the 
only eye-witness that has left us an account 
of these events, and we can therefore not 
correct his statements whether they be true 
or false*" "We now have the accounts of 
five additional eye-witnesses (Prickett him- 
self is one of the six whose testimony has 
been recovered), and all of them, so far as 
they go, substantially are in accord with 
Prickett's account. Such agreement is not 
proof of truth. The newly adduced wit- 



PREFACE 



nesses and the earlier single witness equally 
were interested in making ottt a case in 
their own favor that would save them from 
being hanged* But this new evidence does 
entitle Prickett's ** Larger Discourse ** to a 
more respectful consideration than that 
dxihious document heretofore has received* 
Save in matters affected by this fresh ma- 
terialt the following narrative is a conden- 
sation of what has been recorded by Hud- 
son's authoritative biographers, of whom 
the more important are: Samuel Purchas, 
Hessel Gerritz, Emanuel Van Meteren, G. 
M. Asher, Henry C* Murphy, John Romeyn 
Brodhead, and John Meredith Read. 

T. A. J. 

New York, 7a/3J 16, 1909. 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS 

NO portrait of Httdson is known to be in 
existence. What has passed with the 
uncritical for his portrait — a dapper-look- 
ing man wearing a ruffed collar — frequently 
has been, and continues to be, reproduced. 
Who that man was is unknown. That he 
was not Hudson is certain. 

Lacking Hudson's portrait, I have used 
for a frontispiece a photograph, especially- 
taken for this purpose, of the interior of the 
Church of Saint Ethelburga: the sole re- 
maining material link, of which we have 
sure knowledge, between Hudson and our- 
selves. The drawing on the cover represents 
what is very near to being another material 
link — the replica, lately built in Holland, 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS 

of the *'HaIf Moon/' the ship in which Hud- 
son made his most famous voyage. 

The other tllastrations have been selected 
with a strict regard to the meaning of that 
word. In order to throw light on the text, 
I have preferred — to the ventures of fancy 
— reproductions of title-pages of works 
on navigation that Hudson probably used; 
pictures of the few and crude instruments of 
navigation that he certainly used; and pict- 
ures of ships virtually identical with those 
in which he sailed. 

The copy of Wright's famous work on 
navigation that Hudson may have had, and 
probably did have, with him was of an 
earlier date than that (I6I0) of which the 
title-page here is reproduced. This repro- 
duction is of interest in that it shows at a, 
glance all of the nautical instruments that 
Hudson had at his command; and of a still 
greater interest in that the map which is a 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS 

part of it exhibits what at that timet by ex- 
ploration or by conjectare, was the known 
world* To the making of that map Httdson 
himself contributed: on it, with a previous- 
ly unknown assurance, his River clearly is 
marked* The inadequate indication of his 
Bay probably is taken from Weymouth's 
chart — the chart that Hudson had with him 
on his voyage* A curious feature of this 
map is its marking — in defiance of known 
facts — of two straits, to the north and to the 
south of a large island, where should be the 
Isthmus of Panama* 

The one seemingly fanciful picture, that 
of the mermaids, is not fanciful — a point 
that I have enlarged upon elsewhere — by 
the standard of Hudson's times* Hudson 
himself believed in the existence of mer- 
maids: as is proved by his matter-of-fact 
entry in his log that a mermaid had been 
seen by two of his crew* 



A BRIEF LIFE 
OF HENRY HUDSON 



HENRY HUDSON 




F ever a compelling Fate set its 
grip upon a man and drove him 
to an accomplishment beside his 
purpose and outside his thought, 
it was when Henry Hudson — 
laving headed his ship upon an ordered 
course northeastward — directly traversed 
his orders by fetching that compass to the 
southwestward which ended by bringing 
him into what now is Hudson's River, and 
which led on quickly to the founding of 

what now is New York. 

I 



HENRY HUDSON 

Indeed, the late Thomas Aquinas, and 
the later Calvin, cottid have made otrt from 
the few known facts in the life of this 
navigator so pretty a case in favor of Pre- 
destination that the blessed St^ Augustine 
and the worthy Arminius — supposing the 
four come together for a friendly dish of 
theological talk — would have had their 
work cut out for them to formulate a 
countercase in favor of Free Will. It is 
a curious truth that every important move 
in Hudson's life of which we have record 
seems to have been a forced move: some- 
times with a look of chance about it — as 
when the directors of the Dutch East 
India Company called him back and hastily 
renewed with him their suspended agree- 
ment that he should search for a passage 
to Cathay on a northeast course past Nova 
Zembia, and so sent him off on the voyage 

that brought the ** Half Moon " into Hud- 
2 



HENRY HUDSON 

son's River; sometimes with the fatalism 
very m«ch in evidence — as when his own 
government seized him ottt of the Dutch 
service, and so pttt him in the way to go 
sailing to his death on that voyage through 
Hudson's Strait that ended, for him, in his 
mutineering crew casting him adrift to starve 
with cold and - hunger in Hudson's Bay* 
And, being dead, the same inconsequent 
Fate that harried him while alive has pre- 
served his name, and very nobly, by an- 
choring it fast to that River and Strait and 
Bay forever: and this notwithstanding the 
fact that all three of them were discovered 
by other navigators before his time* 

Hudson sought, as from the time of Colum- 
bus downward other navigators had sought 
before him, a short cut to the Indies; but 
his search was made, because of what those 
others had accomplished, within narrowed 
lines. In the century and more that had 
3 



HENRY HUDSON 

passed between the great Admirars death 
and the beginning of Hudson's explorations 
one important geographical fact had been 
established: that there was no water-way 
across America between, rowghly, the lati- 
tudes of 40° South and 40° North. Of neces- 
sity, therefore — since to round America 
south of 40° South would make a longer 
voyage than by the known route around the 
Cape of Good Hope — exploration that might 
produce practical results had to be made 
north of 40° North, either westward from 
the Atlantic or eastward from the North 
Sea* 

Even within those lessened limits much 
had been determined before Hudson's time. 
To the eastward, both Dutch and English 
searchers had gone far along the coast of 
Russia; passing between that coast and Nova 
Zembia and entering the Kara Sea. To the 
westward, in the year 1524, Verazzano had 
4 










FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF A SEA HAND- 
BOOK OF HUDSON'S TIME 



HENRY HUDSON 

sailed along the American coast from 34° 
to 50° North; and in the cotirse of that 
voyage had entered what now is New York 
Bay. In the year 1598^ Sebastian Cabot 
had coasted America from ZZ° North to the 
mouth of what now is Hudson's Strait. 
Frobisher had entered that Strait in the year 
1577; Weymouth had sailed into it nearly 
one hundred leagues in the year 1602; and 
Portuguese navigators* in the years 1558 and 
1569, probably had passed through it and 
had entered what now is Hudson's Bay. 

As the result of all this exploration, Hud- 
son had at his command a mass of informa- 
tion — positive as well as negative — that at 
once narrowed his search and directed it; 
and there is very good reason for believing 
that he actually carried with him charts of 
a crude sort on which, more or less clearly, 
were indicated the Strait and the Bay and 
the River which popularly are regarded as 



HENRY HUDSON 

of his discovery and to which have been 
given his name. But I hold that his just 
fame is not lessened by the fact that his 
discoveries, nominally, were rediscoveries. 
Within the proper meaning of the word they 
trtily were his dis-coveries: in that he did 
«n-cover them so effectually that they be- 
came known clearly, and thereafter remained 
known clearly, to the world. 



n 




ECAUSE of his MI accomplish- 
ment of what others essayed and 
only partially accomplished, Hud- 
son's name is the best known — 
excepting only that of Columbus — 
of all the names of explorers by land and 
sea. From Purchases time downward it has 
headed the list of Arctic discoverers; in 
every history of America it has a leading 
place; on every map of North America it 
thrice is written large; here in New York, 
which owes its founding to his exploring 
voyage, it is tittered — as we refer to the 
river, the county, the city, the street, the 
railroad, bearing it — a thousand times a day. 
7 



HENRY HUDSON 

And yet, in despite of this familiarity with 
his name, our certain knowledge of Hudson's 
life is limited to a period (April 19, 1607- 
J«ne 22, I6n ) of little more than four years. 
Of that period, during which he. did the 
work that has made him famous, we have a 
partial record — much of it under his own 
hand — that certainly is authentic in its 
general outlines until it reaches the culmi- 
nating tragedy. At the very last, where we 
most want the clear truth, we have only the 
one-sided account presented by his mur- 
derers: and murderers, being at odds with 
moral conventions generally, are not, as a 
rule, models of veracity. And so it has 
fallen out that what we know about the end 
of Hudson's life, save that it ended foully, 
is as uncertain as the facts of the earlier and 
larger part of his life are obscure. 

An American investigator, the late Gen. 
John Meredith Read, has gone farthest in 

a 



HENRY HUDSON 

ttnearthing facts which enlighten this ob- 
scurity; bat with no better result than to 
establish certain strong probabilities as to 
Hudson's ancestry and antecedents* By 
General Read's showing, the Henry Hudson 
mentioned by Hakluyt as one of the charter 
members (February 6, 1554-5) of the Musco- 
vy Company, possibly was our navigator's 
grandfather. He was a freeman of London, 
a member of the Skinners Company, and 
sometime an alderman* He dizd in Decem- 
ber, 1555, according to Stow, ^*of the late 
hote burning feuers, whereof died many 
olde persons, so that in London dizd seven 
Aldermen in the space of tenne monthes*" 
They gave that departed worthy a very 
noble funeral ! Henry Machyn, who had 
charge of it, describes it in his delightful 
'" Diary " in these terms: ** The xx day of 
December was bered at Sant Donstones in 
the Est master Hare Herdson, altherman of 
9 



HENRY HUDSON 

London and Skynner, and on of the masters 
of the gray frere in London with men and 
xxiiij women in mantyl fresse [frieze?] 
gownes^ a herse [catafalque] of wax and 
hong with blake; and there was my lord 
mare and the swordberer in blake, and 
dyvers oder althermen in blake, and the 
resedew of the althermen, atys berying; and 
all the masters, boyth althermen and odtir, 
with ther gren staffes in ther hands, and all 
the chylders of the gray frersse, and iiij in 
blake gownes bayring iiij gret stayffes- 
torchys bornying, and then xxiiij men with 
torchys bornying; and the morrow iij masses 
songe; and after to ys plasse to dener; and 
ther was ij goodly whyt branches, and mony 
prestes and clarkes syngying/* Stow adds 
that the dead alderman's widow, Barbara, 
caused to be set up in St» Dunstan's to his 
memory — and also to that of her second 
husband. Sir Richard Champion, and pro- 
JO 



HENRY HUDSON 

spectivcly to her own — a montimcnt in keep- 
ing with their worldly condition and with 
the somewhat mixed facts of their triangu- 
lar case* This was a ** very faire Alabaster 
Tombe, richly and curiotisly gilded, and two 
ancient figures of Aldermen in scarlet kneel- 
ing, the one at the one end of the tombe 
in a goodly arch, the other at the other 
end in like manner, and a comely figure of 
a lady between them, who was wife to them 
both/' 

The names have been preserved in legal 
records of three of the sons — Thomas, John 
and Edward — of this eminent Londoner: 
who flourished so greatly in life; who was 
given so handsome a send-off into eternity; 
and who, presumably, retains in that final 
state an undiwidzd one-half interest in the 
lady whose comely figure was sculptured 
upon his tomb. General Read found record 
of a Henry Hudson, mentioned by Stow as 

n 



HENRY HUDSON 

a citizen of London in the year \SS^f who 
may also have been a son of the alderman; 
of a Captain Thomas Hwdson^ of Limehotise, 
who had a leading part in an expedition set 
forth ** into the parts of Persia and Media " 
by the Mtisco\^ Company in the years 1577- 
81; of a Thomas Hudson, of Mortlake, who 
was a friend of Dr. Jolm Dee, and to whom 
references frequently are made in the fa- 
mous ** Diary ** such as the following: 
** March 6 [ t Sd>% I, and Mr. Adrian Gilbert 
and John Davis did mete with Mr. Alder- 
man BarneSt Mr. Townson, and Mr. Young, 
and. Mr. Hudson abowt the N.W. voyage.*' 
Concerning a Christopher Hudson — who was 
in the service of the Muscovy Company as 
its agent and factor at Moscow from about 
the year 1553 until about the year 1576 — 
the only certainty is that he was not a son 
of the Alderman. There is a record of the 

year 1560 that '* Qiristopher Hudson hath 
\2 



ilie «\vi-nrtrt^. 




O ^ 



APPARATUS FOR CORRECTING ERRORS OF 
THE COMPASS 



FROM CERTAINE ERRORS IN NAVIGATION." LONDON. 1610 



HENRY HUDSON 

written to come home ♦ ♦ ♦ considering the 
death of his father and mother ''; and, as the 
Alderman died in the year 1555, and as his 
remarried widow was alive in the year 1560, 
this is conclusive* Being come back to 
England, this Christopher rose to be a person 
of importance in the Company; as appears 
from the fact that he was one of a commit- 
tee (circa 1583) appointed to confer with 
** Captain Chris. Carlile . . . upon his in- 
tended discoveries and attempt into the 
hithermost parts of America/' 

General Read thus summarized the re- 
sult of his investigations: ** We have leeirned 
thai London was the residence of Henry 
Hudson the elder, of Henry Hudson his son, 
and of Christopher Hudson, and that Captain 
Thomas Hudson lived at Limehouse, now a 
part of the Metropolis; while Thomas Hud- 
son, the friend of Dr. John Dee, resided at 
Mortlake, then only six or seven miles from 
J3 



HENRY HUDSON 

the City ♦ . . By reference to a statement 
made by Abakuk Prickett, in his * Larger 
Discourse/ it will be fotmd that Henry Hud- 
son the discoverer also was a citizen of Lon- 
don and had a house there/' From all of 
w^hich, together with various minor corrobo- 
rative facts, he draws these conclusions : 
That Henry Hudson the discoverer was the 
descendant, probably the grandson, of the 
Henry Hudson who died while holding the 
office of Alderman of the City of London in 
the year 1555; that he ** received his early 
training, and imbibed the ideas which con- 
trolled the purposes of his after life, under 
the fostering care of the great Corporation 
[the Muscovy Company] which his relatives 
had helped to found and afterwards to main- 
tain "; that he entered the service of that 
Company as an apprentice, in accordance 
with the then custom, and in due course 

was advanced to command rank* 
14 



HENRY HUDSON 

That is the net result of General Read's 
most laboriotisly painstaking investigations* 
The facts for which he searched so diligently, 
and so longed to find, he did not find* In a 
foot-note he added: ** The place and date of 
Hudson's birth will doubtless be accurately 
ascertained in the course of the examinations 
now being made in England under my di- 
rections* The result of these researches I 
hope to be able to present to the public at 
no distant day*'' That note was written 
nearly fifty years ago, and its writer died 
long since with his hope unrealized* 

But while General Read failed to accom- 
plish his main purpose, he didt as I have said, 
more than any other investigator has done 
to throw light on Hudson's ancestry, and 
on. his connection with the Muscovy Com- 
pany in whose service he sailed* Our navi- 
gator may or may not have been a grandson 
of the alderman who cut so fine a figure in 
15 



HENRY HUDSON 

the City three centuries and a half ago ; but 
beyond a reasonable doubt he was of the 
family — so eminently distinguished in the 
annals of discovery — to which that alder- 
man, one of the founders of the Muscovy 
Company, and Christopher Hudson, one of 
its later governors, and Captain Thomas 
Hudson, who sailed in its service, all be- 
longed. And, being akin to such folk, the 
natural disposition to adventure was so 
strong within him that it led him on to 
accomplishments which have made him the 
most illustrious bearer of his name. 



Ill 



£1—11 



NNO, 1607, Aprill the nineteenth, 
at Saint Ethelburget in Bishops 
Gate streett did communicate with 

Wthe rest of the parishioners, these 
I persons, seamen, purposing to goe 
to sea foare days after, for to discover a 
passage by the North Pole to Japan and 
China. First, Henry Hudson, master. 
Secondly, William Colines, his mate. Third- 
ly, James Young. Fourthly, John Colman. 
Fiftly, John Cooke. Sixtly, James Beu- 
bery. Seventhly, James Skrutton. Eight- 
ly, John Pleyce. Ninthly, Thomas Barter. 
Tenthly, Richard Day. Eleventhly, James 
Knight. Twelfthly, John Hudson, a boy/' 
17 



HENRY HUDSON 

"With those words Ptjrchas prefaced his ac- 
count of what is known — because we have 
no record of earlier voyages — as Hudson's 
first voyage; and with those words our cer- 
tain knowledge of Hudson's life begins* 

St» Ethelburga'st a restful pause in the 
bustle of Bishopsgate Street, still stands — 
the worse, to be sure, for the clutter of little 
shops that has been built in front of it, and 
for incongruous interior renovation — and I 
am very grateful to Purchas for having pre- 
served the scrap of information that links 
Hudson's living body with that church 
which still is alive: into which may pass by 
the very doorway that he passed through 
those who venerate his memory; and there 
may stand within the very walls and beneath 
the very roof that sheltered him when he 
and his ship's company partook of the Sacra- 
ment together three hundred years ago, 
Purchas, no doubt, could have told all that 
18 



HENRY HUDSON 

we so gladly would know of Hudson's early 
history^ B«t he did not tell it— and we 
must rest contentt I think well content, with 
that poetic beginning at the chancel rail of 
St. Ethelburga's of the strong life that less 
than fo«r years later came to its epic ending* 
The voyage made in the year 1607, for 
which Hudson and his crew prepared by 
making their peace with God in St. Ethel- 
barga's, had nothing to do with America; 
nor did his voyage of the year following have 
anything to do with this continent. Both 
of those adventures were set forth by the 
Muscovy Company in search of a northeast 
passage to the Indies; and, while they failed 
in their main purpose, they added important 
facts concerning the coasts of Spitzbergen 
and of Nova Zembia to the existing stock 
of geographical knowledge, and yielded 
practical results in that they extended Eng- 
land's Russian trade. 
^ 19 



HENRY HUDSON 

The most notable scientific accomplish- 
ment of the first voyage was the high north- 
ing made. By observation Quiy 23, 1607) 
Hudson was in 80*^ 23'. By reckoning, two 
days later, he was in 8r\ His reckoning, 
because of his ignorance of the currents, 
always has been considered doubtful. His 
observed position recently has been 
questioned by Sir Martin Conway, who 
has arrived at the conclusion : ** It is de- 
monstrably probable that for 80'' 23' we 
should read 79' 23' r' But even with this 
reduction accepted, the fact remains that 
until the year J 773, when Captain Phipps 
reached 80^ 48', Hudson held the record for 
** farthest north.'' 

To the second voyage belongs the often- 
quoted incident of the mermaid. The log of 

*** Hudson's Voyage to Spitzbcrgen in 1607/* by 
Sir Martin G^nway. The Geographical Journal. 
February, 1900. 

20 



HENRY HUDSON 

that voyage that has come down to «s was 
kept by Hudson himself; and this is what 
he wrote in it (June 15, 1608) with his own 
hand: ** All day and night cleere sunshine. 
The wind at east. The latitude at noone 
75 degrees 7 minutes. We held westward 
by our account 13 leagues. In the after- 
noon, the sea was asswaged, and the wind 
being at east we set sayle, and stood south 
and by east, and south southeast as we could. 
This morning one of our companie looking 
over boord saw a mermaid, and calling up 
some of the companie to see her, one more 
came up and by that time shee was come 
close to the ships side, looking earnestly on 
the men, A little after a sea came and 
overturned her. From the navill upward 
her backe and breasts were like a womans, 
as they say that saw her, but her body as 
big as one of us. Her skin very white, 
and long haire hanging downe behinde of 
21 



HENRY HUDSON 

colour blacke* In her going downe they 
saw her taykt which was like the tayle of 
a porposse, and speckled like a macrell. 
Their names that saw her were Thomas 
EQUes and Robert Rayner/' 

I am sorry to say that the too-conscien- 
tioas Doctor Asher, in editing this log, felt 
called tipon to add, in a foot-note: ** Prob- 
ably a seal *'; and to quote, in stipport of 
his prosaic suggestion, various unnecessary 
facts about seals observed a few centuries 
later in the same waters by Doctor Kane. 
For my own part, I much prefer to believe 
in the mermaid — and, by so believing, to 
create in my own heart somewhat of the 
feeling which was in the hearts of those old 
seafarers in a time when sea-prodigies and 
sea-mysteries were to be counted with as 
among the perils of every ocean voyage. 

This belief of mine is not a mere whimsical 
fancy. Unless we take as real what the 
22 



HENRY HUDSON 

shipmcn of Hudson's time took as real, we 
not only miss the strong romance which was 
so large a part of their lif e, but we go wide 
of understanding the brave spirit in which 
their exploring work was done* Adventur- 
ing into tempests in their cockle-shell ships 
they took as a matter of course — and were 
brave in that way without any thought of 
their bravery. As a part of the day's work, 
also, they took their wretched quarters 
aboard ship and their wretched, and usually 
insufficient, food* Their highest courage 
was reserved for facing the fearsome dangers 
which existed only in their imaginations — 
but wfiich were as real to them as v/ere the 
dangers of wreck and of starvation and of 
battlings with wild beasts, brute or human, 
in strange new-found lands* It followed of 
necessity that men leading lives so full of 
physical hardship, and so beset by wonder- 
ing dread, were moody and discontented — 
23 



HENRY HUDSON 

and so easily went on from sullen anger into 
open mutiny* And equally did it follow- 
that the shipmasters who held those surly 
brutes to the collar — driving them to their 
work with blowSt and now and then killing 
one of them by way of encouraging the 
others to obedience — were as absolutely 
fearless and as absolutely strong of will as 
men could be* All of these conditions we 
must recognize, and must try to realize, if 
we would understand the work that was 
cut out for Hudson, and for every master 
navigator, in that cruel and harsh and yet 
ardently romantic time* 



IV 



1 


l] 


w 



T is Hudson's third voyage — the 
one that brought him into our own 
river, and that led on directly to 
the founding of our own city — 
that has the deepest interest to us 
of New York* He made it in the service of 
the Dutch East India Company: but how he 
came to enter that service is one of the un- 
solved problems in his career. 

In itselft there was nothing out of the com- 
mon in those days in an English shipmaster 
going captain in a Dutch vesseh But Hud- 
son — by General Read's showing — was so 
strongly backed by family influence in the 
Muscovy Company that it is not easy to 
25 



HENRY HUDSON 

understand why he took service with a cor- 
poration that in a way was the Muscovy 
Company's trade rival. Lacking any ex- 
planation of the matter, I am inclined to 
link it with the action of the English Govern- 
ment — when he returned from his voyage 
and made harbor at Dartmouth — in detain- 
ing him in England and in ordering him to 
serve only under the English flag; and to 
infer that his going to Holland was the re- 
sult of a falling out with the directors of the 
Muscovy Company; and that at their re- 
quest, when the chances of the sea brought 
him within English jurisdiction, he was de- 
tained in his own country — and so was put 
in the way to take up with the adventure 
that led him straight onward to his death. 
In all of which may be seen the working-out 
of that fatalism which to my mind is so ap- 
parent in Hudson's doings, and which is 
most apparent in his third voyage: that 
26 



HENRY HUDSON 

evidently had its origin in a series of curiotjs 
mischances, and that ended in his doing 
precisely what those who sent him on it 
were resolved that he should not do. 

All that we know certainly about his tak- 
ing service with the Dutch Company is told 
in a letter from President Jeannin — the 
French envoy who was engaged in the years 
I608-9t with representatives of other nations^ 
in trying to patch up a truce or a peace be- 
tween the Netherlands and Spain — to his 
master, Henry IV. Along with his open 
instructions, Jeannin seems to have had 
private instructions — in keeping with the 
customs and principles of the time — to do 
what he could do in the way of stealing from 
Holland for the benefit of France a share of 
the East India trade. In regard to this 
amiable phase of his mission, under date of 
January 21, 1609, he wrote : 

** Some time ago I made, by your Majesty's 
27 



HENRY HUDSON 

orderst overtures to an Amsterdam merchant 
named Isaac Le Maire, a wealthy man of a 
considerable experience in the East India 
trade. He offered to make himself oseftil 
to your Majesty in matters of this kind. 
♦ . . A few days ago he sent to me his brother, 
to inform me that an English pilot who has 
twice sailed in search of a northern passage 
has been called to Amsterdam by the East 
India Company to tell them what he had 
found, and whether he hoped to discover 
that passage. They had been well satisfied 
with his answer, and had thought they might 
succeed in the scheme. They had, however, 
been unwilling to undertake at once the said 
expedition; and they had only remunerated 
the Englishman for his trouble, and had dis- 
missed him with the promise of employing 
him next year, t6I0. The Englishman, hav- 
ing thus obtained his leave, Le Maire, who 
knows him well, has since conferred with him 



theArteofNauigation. 



Fol. 6. 




IBut ^f re fomc ma? mooiic a toubtt , facing, tljat on tlje 



arcaf caallvc0 airt> JUlavncp, tt»iCbmanvi»uifrfttic;6of fimo;? 
otl)crD«pc anu\)nequallplatc0, b?rcafontx)ljereof,tt)f cart^ 
cannot truelT! be caUeu rounoc.lCo tins J fa p , tljat in tvoo man 
mrj5,tl)CCfirt^iStaUcDantitinticrlfoobetobcroimtic . ii0 after 
onemanner,rpeak)n&p}ccifelp , it t^caltcDrounoe, as a Circle 
o^a ^pt)ere, Uil)ict)e toe call rotmbe, bccaufe tl)at all rigl)tl?nc^ 
&;atocn fromtlje center tljercof to tlje circtimferencf,are equall. 
ff:ijeotberrounbneffc, ia ronfiuereb toit^otit f^i« pjecifenciTe: 
anb iu fuclj,ajj not b? all bvs partes is equally tntfant ft-om ijys 
mvbbc{IoKentcr,ljut hat!) fomc partes; bvfiljer, anb fomelotu* 
er, vet not in fuel) qnantitie as may beiTrop t^ rounbncllic off l)e 
tobole. as if in a iSotole tberc tocre ccrta^ic cl?fteso;H)Oles, 
it tt)oulDe not tljerebp leaue to be rounbe , altljoufib "of perfettlp 
o;pjecifclp rounbe . SlnbfoMbiscanfefaitb Auerrois, tIjataU 
tbouslj both tl}e hcauenlv bouies ano tbc ffi lements are of roimb 
founncvet Differ ifiey in tliis, tl)attbel)caucnlrfe>pberesljauc 
perfect ro«nbneflc,anb tljc Clcmentesnot.^s tlje Cartb>bv rca^ 
fon of bis a^ounta^nes i tmalcs^tlje &ea bv bys encrcafiu8,ani> 
Oecreafing;tl)C C[v>;ealfofo;l)isnearene(reto tbe fv,JC,anDb?l)Fi5 
contrarictie Doetb fomet^me ooo.auii ftmetvme fuffe r ( tbat is to ■x\^^ ,^ 
fap)is fomctjme adnie anb fomctime paffiue.Jso tbat follotDing afliue&Vai 
tbconc,itQcctl)tl)eotlicr,b?rearontol)creof, it alfolacfeet^pen ''"',';;;' ""' 
fecte rounoneflie , )l3uttl)ef»je,fo^a»mncl)easitisnearetotI)e fJ^d/ 
concaue of tl)c Circle oftlje ^oone , trtljici] i{i$9p^ericall,map 
ttjerefa^c be calUb ^pijcricall o? rounbe. """ "^^^ '' 



315 4 



The 



HOW THE EARTH IS ROUND" 

FAC-SIMILE OF PAGE "tHE ARTE OF NAVIGATION" 
LONDON. EDITION 1596 



HENRY HUDSON 

and has learnt his opinions on these subjects; 
with regard to which the Englishman had 
also intercourse with PlancitiSt a great geog- 
rapher and clever mathematician* Plan- 
cius maintains, according to the reasons of 
his science, and from the information given 
him, ♦ ♦ ♦ that there must be in the northern 
parts a passage corresponding to the one 
found near the south pole by Magellan* ♦ ♦ ♦ 
The Englishman also reports that, having 
been to the north as far as 80 degrees, he has 
found that the more northwards he went, 
the less cold it became/' 

Hudson's name is not mentioned by Jean- 
nin, but as no other navigator had been so 
far north as 80^, there can be no doubt as 
to who '* the Englishman ** was* The letter 
goes on to urge that the French king should 
undertake the ** glorious enterprise *' of 
searching for a northerly passage to the 
Indies, and that he should undertake it open- 
29 



HENRY HUDSON 

ly: as ** the East India Company will not 
have even a right to complain, because the 
charter granted to them by the States Gener- 
al authorizes them to sail only around the 
Cape of Good Hope, and not by the north/' 
But Jeannin adds that Le Maire ^'does not 
dare to speak about it to any one, because 
the East India Company fears above every- 
thing to be forestalled in this design/' 

Precisely that fear on the part of the East 
India Company did undercut the French 
envoy's plans. In a postscript to his letter 
he adds: ** This letter having been termi- 
nated, and I being ready to send it to your 
Majesty, Le Maire has again written to 
me. ♦ ♦ ♦ Some members of the East India 
Company, who had been informed that the 
Englishman had secretly treated with him, 
had become afraid that I might wish to em- 
ploy him for the discovery of the passage. 
For this reason they have again treated with 
30 



HENRY HUDSON 

him about his undertaking such an expedi- 
tion in the course of the present year. The 
directors of the Amsterdam Chamber have 
written to the other chambers of the same 
Company to request their approval; and 
should the others refuse^ the Amsterdam 
Chamber will undertake the expedition at 
their own risk/' 

In point of fact, the other chambers did 
refuse (although, before Hudson actually 
sailed, they seem to have ratified the 
agreement made with him); and the Am- 
sterdam Chamber, single-handed, did set 
forth the voyage. 

In view of the fact that the French project 
in a way was realized, a curiously subtle 
interest attaches to Jeannin's showing of 
how narrow were the chances by which Hud- 
son missed being taken into the French 
service, and was taken into that of the 
Dutch. A French ship, under the command 
4 3J 



HENRY HUDSON 

of a captain whose name has not been pre- 
served, did sail for the North — almost pre- 
cisely a month later than Hudson's sailing — 
on May 5, 1609* Beyond the bare fact that 
such a voyage was made, nothing is known 
about it: whence the inference is a reason- 
able one that it produced no new discoveries. 
But suppose that Hudson had commanded; 
and, so commanding, had not sailed that 
unknown captain's useless course but had 
brought his French ship into what now are 
our bay and our river; and that the French, 
not the Dutch, had founded the city here 
that now is — but by those hair-wide chances 
might not have been — New York? 




R, HENRY C MURPHY -to 
whose searchings in the archives 
of Holland we owe so much — 
found at The Hague a manuscript 
history of the East India Com- 
pany, written by P* van Dam in the seven- 
teenth century, in which a copy of Hudson's 
contract with the Company is preserved. 
The contract reads as follows: 

** On this eighth of January, in the year 
of our Lord one thousand six hundred and 
ninCt the Directors of the East India Com- 
pany of the Chamber of Amsterdam of the 
ten years reckoning of the one part, and 
Master Henry Hudson, Englishman, assisted 
33 



HENRY HUDSON 

by Jodocus Hondius^ of the other part, have 
agreed in manner following, to wit: That 
the said Directors shall in the first place 
eqtiip a small vessel or yacht of abottt thirty 
lasts [60 tons] burden, well provided with 
men, provisions and other necessaries, with 
which the above named Hudson shall, about 
the first of April, sail in order to search for 
a passage by the north, around the north 
side of Nova Zembia, and shall continue 
thus along that parallel until he shall be able 
to sail southward to the latitude of sixty 
degrees* He shall obtain as much knowl- 
edge of the lands as can be done without 
any considerable loss of time, and if it is 
possible return immediately in order to make 
a faithful report and relation of his voyage 

^ Hondias, an eminent map-engraver of the time, 
was a Fleming, who, being driven from Flanders by 
the Spanish cruelties, made his home in Amsterdam, 
where he dizd in the year 1611. 
34 



THE 

ARTE OF NAVI 



G A T I O N. 




Contayning a breife defcription of 

the Spheare, with the partes and Circles 

ot the fame : as alto the making and vfe of 

certainelnftrumenrs. Verynecefsa- 

rieforall fortes of Sea-men to 

vndeifland. 

Firft written in SpanKh by Martin (urtij, and tranflatedinto 
Englifh by Richard Eden: and laflly correAed and aug- 
mented, with a Regiment or Table of declina- 
tion, and diuersoiher necefTry tables 
and rules of common Naui- 
gation. 
Calculated (thisyeare i ; 9 ^^beinc^leapyeare) by J*. T- 




Imprinted at London by Edw. AHde for Hugh Ajlley, by the 
afsignes of Richard Watkins, and are to be folde at 

Siina Magnus corner. I J ^ 6. 



FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF A SEA HAND- 
BOOK OF HUDSON-S TIME 



HENRY HUDSON 

to the Directorst and to deliver over his 
journalst log-books, and charts, together 
with an account of everything whatsoever 
which shall happen to him daring the voyage 
without keeping anything back, 

** For which said voyage the Directors 
shall pay the said Hudson, as well for his 
outfit for the said voyage as for the support 
of his wife and children, the sum of eight 
hundred guilders [say $336]. And in case 
(which God prevent) he does not come back 
or arrive hereabouts within a year, the 
Directors shall farther pay to his wife two 
hundred guilders in cash; and thereupon 
they shall not be farther liable to him or 
his heirs, unless he shall either afterward 
or within the year arrive and have found the 
passage good and suitable for the Company to 
use; in which case the Directors will reward 
the before named Hudson for his dangers, 
trouble, and knowledge, in their discretion, 
35 



HENRY HUDSON 

** And in case the Directors think proper to 
prosecute and continue the same voyage, it 
is stipulated and agreed with the before 
named Hudson that he shall make his resi- 
dence in this country with his wife and chil- 
dren, and shall enter into the employment 
of no other than the Company, and this at 
the discretion of the Directors, who also 
promise to make him satisfied and content 
for such farther service in all justice and 
equity^ All without fraud or evil intent* 
In witness of the truth, two contracts are 
made hereof ♦ ♦ ♦ and are subscribed by both 
parties and also by Jodocus Hondius as in- 
terpreter and witness/' 

Of Hudson's sailing orders no copy has 
been found; but an abstract of them has 
been preserved by Van Dam in these words: 
** I'his Company, in the year 1609, fitted 
out a yacht of about thirty lasts burden 
and engaged a Mr. Henry Hudson, an Eng- 
36 



HENRY HUDSON 

lishman, and a skilful pilot, as master there- 
of: witli orders to search for the aforesaid 
passage by the north and north-east above 
Nova Zembia toward the lands or straits 
of Amian, and then to sail at least as far 
as the sixtieth degree of north latitude, when 
if the time permitted he was to return from 
the straits of Amian again to this country. 
But he was farther ordered by his instruc- 
tions to think of discovering no other route 
or passages except the route around the 
north and north-east above Nova Zembia; 
with this additional proviso that, if it could 
not be accomplished at that time, another 
route would be the subject of consideration 
for another voyage/' 

It is evident from the foregoing that never 
did a shipmaster get away to sea with more 
explicit orders tfian those which were given 
to Hudson as to how his voyage was, and 
as to how it was not, to be made. On his 
37 



HENRY HUDSON 

obedience to those orders, which essentially 
were a part of his contract, depended the 
obligation of the directors to pay him for his 
services; and farther depended — a considera- 
tion that re^onably might be expected to 
touch him still more closely — their obliga- 
tion to bestow a solatium upon his wife and 
children in the event of his death. And 
yett with those facts clearly before him, he 
did precisely what he had contracted, and 
what in most express terms he was ordered, 
not to do. 



VI 



H 






n u U 



UDSON sailed from the Texel m 
the **HaIf Moon*' (possibly accom- 
panied by a small vessel, the 
** Good Hopet'' that did not par- 
swe the voyage) on March 27- 
April 6, 1609; and for more than a month 
— ttntil he had doubled the North Cape and 
was well on toward Nova Zembia — went 
dtfly on his way. Then came the mutiny 
that made him change, or that gave him 
an excuse for changing, his ordered course. 

The log that has been preserved of this 

voyage was kept by Robert Juet; who was 

Hudson's mate on his second voyage, and 

who was mate again on Hudson's fourth 

39 



HENRY HUDSON 

voyage — until his mutinous conduct caused 
him to be deposed. What rating he had 
on board the ** Half Moon ** is not known; 
nor do we know whether he had, or had 
nott a share in the mutiny that changed 
the ship's course from east to west* With 
a suspicious frankness, he wrote in his log: 
** Because it is a journey usually knowne 
I omit to put downe what passed till we 
came to the height of the North Cape of 
Finmarke, which we did performe by the 
fift of May (stilo novo), being Tuesday/* 
To this he adds the observed position on 
May 5th, IV 46' North, and the course, 
** east, and by south and east,** and con- 
tinues: ** After much trouble, with fogges 
sometimes, and more dangerous ice* The 
nineteenth, being Tuesday, was close stormie 
weather, with much wind and snow, and 
very cold* The wind variable between the 
north north - west and north - east. We 
40 



to I'! 




HENRY HUDSON 

made otir way west and by north till 
noone/' 

His abrupt transition from the fifth to the 
nineteenth of May covers the time in which 
the mutiny occurred* Practically, his log 
begins almost on the day that the ship's 
course was changed* In the smooth con- 
cluding paragraph of this same log, to be 
cited later, he passes over unmentioned the 
mutiny that occurred on the homeward 
voyage* "jadgmg him by the facts recorded 
in the accounts of the voyage into Hud- 
son's Bay, it is a fair assumption that in 
both of these earlier mutinies Juet had a 
hand* 

I wish that we could find the bond that 
held Hudson and Juet together* That Juet 
could write, and that he understood the 
science of navigation — although those were 
rare accomplishments among seamen in his 
time — fail sufficiently to account for Hud- 
41 



HENRY HUDSON 

son's persistent employment of him. For 
my own part, I revert to my theory of fatal- 
ism. It is my fancy that this ** ancient 
man " — as he is styled by one of his com- 
panions — was Hudson's evil geni«s; and I 
class him with the most finely conceived 
character in Marryat's most finely con- 
ceived romance: the pilot Schriften, in **The 
Phantom Ship.'* Jtist as Schriften clang to 
the younger Van der Decken to thwart him, 
so Juet seems to have clung to Hudson to 
thwart him; and to take — in the last round 
between them— a leading part in compassing 
Hudson's death. 

One authority, and a very good authority, 
for the facts which Juet suppressed con- 
cerning the third voyage is the historian 
Van Meteren: who obtained them, there is 
good reason for believing, directly from Hud- 
son himself. In his ** Historie der Nieder- 
landen " (I6I4) Van Meteren wrote: " This 
42 



HENRY HUDSON 

Henry Hadson left the Texel the 6th of 
April, 1609, and having doubled the Cape 
of Norway the 5th of May, directed his course 
along the northern coasts toward Nova 
Zembla. But he there found the sea as full 
of ice as he had found it in the preceding 
year, so that he lost the hope of effecting 
anything during the season. This circum- 
stance, and the cold which some of his men 
who had been in the East Indies could not 
bear, caused quarrels among the crew, they 
being partly English, partly Dutch; upon 
which the captain, Henry Hudson, laid be- 
fore them two propositions. The first of these 
was, to go to the coast of America to the lat- 
itude of forty degrees. This idea had been 
suggested to him by some letters and maps 
which his friend Captain Smith had sent him 
from Virginia, and by which he informed 
him that there was a sea leading into the 
western ocean to the north of the southern 
5 43 



HENRY HUDSON 

English colony [Virginia]* Had this in- 
formation been true (experience goes as yet 
to the contrary )t it would have been of great 
advantage^ as indicating a short way to 
India* The other proposition was to direct 
their search to Davis's Straits. This meet- 
ing with general approval, they sailed on the 
Hth of May, and arrived, with a good wind, 
at the Faroe Islands, where they stopped 
btrt twenty-four hours to supply themselves 
with fresh water* After leaving these 
islands they sailed on till, on the 18th of 
July, they reached the coast of Nova Francia 
under 44 degrees. ♦ ♦ . They left that place 
on the 26th of July, and kept out at sea till 
the 3d of August, when they were again near 
the coast in 42 degrees of latitude. Thence 
they sailed on till, on the 1 2th of August, 
they reached the shore under 37 '^ 45'. 
Thence they sailed along the shore until we 
[sic] reached 40° 45', where they found a 
44 



HENRY HUDSON 

good entrance, between two headlandst and 
thus entered on the 1 2th of September 
into as fine a river as can be found, with 
good anchoring ground on both sides/' 

That river, ** as fine as can be found,'* 
was our own Hudson. 

Van Meteren's account of the voyage, 
although not published until the year 16 1 4, 
was written very soon after Hudson's re- 
turn — the slip that he makes in using ** we " 
points to the probability that he copied 
directly from Hudson's log — and in it we 
have all that we ever are likely to know 
about the causes which led to the change 
in the ** Half Moon's " course. For my own 
part, I believe that Hudson did precisely 
what he had wanted to do from the start. 
The prohibitory clause in his instructions, 
forbidding him to go upon other than the 
course laid down for him, pointedly suggests 
that he had expressed the desire — natural 
45 



HENRY HUDSON 

enoaght since he twice had searched vainly 
for a passage by Nova Zembia — to search 
westward instead of eastward for a water- 
way to the Indies* As Van Meteren states^ 
authoritatively, he was encouraged to search 
in that direction by the information given 
him by Captain John Smith concerning a 
passage north of Virginia across the Ameri- 
can continent — a notion that Smith probably 
derived in the first instance from Michael 
Lok's planisphere, which shows the con- 
tinent reduced to a mere strip in about the 
latitude of the river that Hudson found; 
and that he very well might have conceived 
to be confirmed by stories about a great sea 
not far westward (the great lakes) which he 
heard from the Indians. 

But the starting point of this geographical 

error is immaterial. The important fact is 

that Hudson entertained it: and so was led 

to offer for first choice to his mutinous crew 

46 



HENRY HUDSON 

that they should ** go to the coast of America 
in the latitude of forty degrees/* His readi- 
ness with that proposition^ when the chance 
to make it came, confirms my belief that his 
own desire was to sail westward, and that he 
made the most of his opportunity* And 
the essential point, after all, is not whether 
the mutiny forced him to change, or merely 
gave him an excuse for changing, his ordered 
course: it is that he was equal to the emer- 
gency when the mutiny came, and so con- 
trolled it that — instead of going back, de- 
feated of his purpose, to Holland — he 
deliberately took the risk of personal loss 
that attended breaking his contract and 
traversing his orders, and continued on new 
lines his exploring voyage. It is indicative 
of Hudson's character that he met that cast 
of fate against him most resolutely; and 
most resolutely played up to it with a strong 
hand. 

47 



vn 




S the direct result of breaking his 
orderst Htidson was the discoverer 
of o«r river — to which, therefore, 
his name properly has been given 
— and also was the first navigator 
Dy whom our harbor effectively was found* 
I ttse advisedly these precisely differentia- 
ting terms* On the distinctions which they 
make rests Hudson's claim to take practical 
precedence of Verrazano and of Gomez, who 
sailed in past Sandy Hook nearly a hundred 
years ahead of him; and of those shadowy 
nameless shipmen who in the intervening 
time, until his coming, may have made our 
harbor one of their stations — for refitting 
48 



HENRY HUDSON 

and watering — on their voyages from and to 
Portugal and Spain* 

The exploring work of John and of Sebas- 
tian Cabot, who sailed along ottr coast, but 
who missed out harbor, does not come with- 
in my range: save to note that Sebastian 
Cabot pretty certainly was one of the several 
navigators, including Frobisher and Davis, 
who entered Hudson's Strait before Hud- 
son's time. 

Verrazano was an Italian, sailing in the 
French service* Gomez was a Portuguese, 
sailing in the Spanish service. Both sought 
a westerly way to the Indies, and both sought 
it in the same year — 1524. Verrazano has 
left a report of his voyage, written immedi- 
ately upon his return to France; and with it 
a vaguely drawn chart of the coasts which he 
explored. (It is my duty to add that certain 
zealous historians have denounced his report 
as a forgery, and his chart as a ** fake " — a 
49 



HENRY HUDSON 

matter so much too large for discussion here 
that I content myself with expressing the 
opinion that these charges have not been 
sustained.) Gomez has left no report of his 
voyage, but a partial account of it may be 
pieced together from the maritime chronicles 
of his time. He also charted, with an ap- 
proximate accuracy, the lands which he 
coasted; and while his chart has not been 
preserved in its original shape, there is good 
reason for believing that we have it embodied 
in the planisphere drawn by Juan Ribero, 
geographer to Charles V., in the year 1529. 
On that planisphere the seaboard of the 
present states of Maryland, New Jersey, 
New York, and Rhode Island is called **. the 
land of Estevan Gomez.'' 

Lacking the full report that Gomez pre- 
sumably made of his voyage, and lacking 
the original of his chart, it is impossible to 
decide whether he di.6. or did not pass through 
50 



HENRY HUDSON 

the Narrows and enter the Upper Bay, 
Doctor Asher holds that he did make that 
passage; and adds: **It is certain that the 
later Spanish seamen who followed in his 
track in after years were familiar with the 
[Hudson] river, and called it the Rio de 
Gamas/* In support of this strong asser- 
tion he cites the still-extant " Rutters/* or 
** Rotftierst" of the period — the ocean guide- 
books showing the distances from place to 
place, marking convenient stations for water- 
ing and refitting, and describing the en- 
trances to rivers and to harbors — ** from 
which we learn,'' he declares, ** that the Rio 
de Gamas, the name then regularly applied 
to the Hudson on the charts of the time, 
was one of these stages between New Found- 
land and the colonies of Central America/*^ 

' Asher mentions, in this connection, that ** Nan- 
tucket Island also figures in some of these rutters 
tinder the name of the island of Juan Lais, or Juan 
51 



HENRY HUDSON 

In regard to Verrazano — admitting his 
report to be genuine — the fact that he did 
pass through the Narrows into the Upper 
Bay is not open to dispute* He therefore 
must have seen — as^ a little later, Gomez 
may have seen — the true motith of Hudson's 
river eighty-five years before Hudson, by 
actual exploration of it, made himself its 
discoverer. But Verrazano, by his own 
showing, came but a little way into the 
Upper Bay — which he called a lake — 
and he made no exploration of a prac- 
tical sort of the harbor that he had 
found. 

It is but simple justice to Verrazano and 
to Gomez to put on record here, along with 
the story of Hudson's effective discovery, 

Fernandez, and is recommended as a most con- 
venient stage for those who, coming from Europe, 
wish to proceed to the West Indies by way of the 
Bermudas.** 

52 



A Regiment for the Sea,containing 

verie neceffarie matters for all forts of men and 

trauailers.whervnto is added an Hidrographicall difcourfe 

touching the fiue ftucrallpafiages into Cattay, writ ten by 
William Borne 

il5etn)lp co^recte^ ano amenoea by Thomas Hood.D.in pbificbe,tBl)0 bafl) an- 

ded a new Regiment^nd Table of declination. 

OTberetiritotfl alfo abiojnra tijc Mariners guide, toitjj a perfect 

Sea Carde by the laid Thomas Hood. 




^ Imprinted at London by T FRe.for Thomas Wi ght. i fj^S . 



FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF THE MOST FAMOUS 
SEA HANDBOOK OF HUDSON'S TIME 



HENRY HUDSON 

the story of their ineffective finding. Fate 
was against them as distinctly as it was with 
Hudson. They came tinder adverse con- 
ditionst and they came too soon. Back of 
the explorer in the French service there was 
not an alert power eager for colonial ex- 
pansion. Back of the explorer in the Span- 
ish service there was a power so busied with 
colonial expansion on a huge scale— in that 
very year, 1524, Cortes was completing his 
conquest of Mexico, and Pizarro was be- 
ginning his conquest of Peru — that a farther 
enlargement of the colonization contract was 
impossible. 

Therefore we may fall back upon the as- 
sured fact — in which I see again the touch 
of fatalism — that not until Hudson came at 
the right moment, and at the right moment 
gave an accurate account of his explorations 
to a power that was ready immediately to 
colonize the land that he had found, were 
53 



HENRY HUDSON 

oar port and our river, notwithstanding their 
earlier technical discovery, traly discovered 
to the world* As for the river, it assuredly 
is Hudson's very own. 



VIII 



£L_fl 




ROM Juefs log I make the follow- 
ing extracts, telling of the ** Half 
Moon's ** approach to Sandy Hook 
and of her passage into the Lower 
Bay: 

** The first of September, faire weather, 
the wind variable betweene east and south; 
we steered away north north west. At 
noone we found our height [a little north of 
Cape May] to bee 39 degrees 3 minutes. 
. . ♦ The second, in the morning close weather, 
the winde at south in the morning. . From 
twelve untill two of the clocke we steered 
north north west, and had sounding one and 

twentie fathoms; and in running one glasse 
55 



HENRY HUDSON 

we had btit sixteene fathoms^ then seven- 
teene, and so shoalder and shoalder untill 
it came to twelve fathoms* We saw a great 
fire btrt could not see the land. Then we 
came to ten fathoms, whereupon we brought 
our tacks aboord, and stood to the eastward 
east south east, foure glasses. Then the 
sunne arose, and we steered away north 
againe, and saw the land [the low region about 
Sandy Hook] from the west by north to 
the north west by north, all like broken 
islands, and our soundings were eleven and 
ten fathoms. Then we looft in for the 
shoare, and faire by the shoare we had seven 
fathoms. The course along the land we 
found to be north east by north. From the 
land which we had first sight of, untill we 
came to a great lake of water [the Lower 
Bay] as we could judge it to be, being 
drowned land, which made it to rise like 
islands, which was in length ten leagues. 
56 



HENRY HUDSON 

The motith of that land hath many shoalds, 
and the sea breaketh on them as it is cast oat 
of the motith of it* And from that lake or 
bay the land lyeth north by east, and we had 
a great streame out of the bay; and from 
thence otir sounding was ten fathoms two 
leagues from the land* At five of the clocke 
we anchored, being little winde, and rode in 
eight fathoms water. . ♦ ♦ This night I found 
the land to hall the compasse 8 degrees. 
For to the northward off us we saw high hils 
[Staten Island and the Highlands]* For the 
day before we found not above two degrees 
of variation. This is a very good land to fall 
with, and a pleasant land to see. 

** The third, the morning mystie, untill 
ten of the clocke. Then it cleered, and the 
wind came to the south south east, so wee 
weighed and stood to the northward. The 
land is very pleasant and high, and bold 
to fall withal. At three of the clocke in 
6 57 



HENRY HUDSON 

the after noone, we canie to three great 
rivers [the Raritan, the Arthur Kill and the 
Narrows]. So we stood along to the north- 
ermost [the Narrows], thinking to have gone 
into it, btrt we found it to have a very shoald 
barre before it, for we had but ten foot water. 
Then WT cast about to the southward, and 
found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three 
and a quarter, till we caine to the souther 
side of them; then we had five and sixe 
fathoms, and anchored. So wee sent in our 
boate to sound, and they found no lesse 
water than foure, five, sixe, and seven fath- 
oms, and returned in an houre and a halfe. 
So we weighed and went in, and rode in five 
fathoms, oze ground, and saw many salmons, 
and mullets, and rayes, very great. The 
height is 40 degrees 30 minutes.** 

That is the authoritative account of Hud- 
son's great finding. I have quoted it in 
full partly because of the thrilling interest 
58 



HENRY HUDSON 

that it has for us; but more to show that 
the record of his explorations — the ** Half 
Moon's ** log bein^ written throughout with 
the same definiteness and accuracy — gave 
what neither Gomez nor Verrazano gave: 
clear directions for finding with certainty 
the haven that he, and those earlier navi- 
gators, had found by chance. On that fact, 
and on the other fact that his directions 
promptly were utilized, rests his claim to 
be the practical discoverer of the harbor of 
New York. 

For more than a week the ** Half Moon ** 
lay in the Lower Bay and in the Narrows. 
Then, on the eleventh of September, she 
passed fairly beyond Staten Island and came 
out into the Upper Bay: and Hudson saw 
the great river — which on that day became 
his river — stretching broadly to the north. 
I can imagine that when he found that wide 
waterway, leading from the ocean into the 
59 



HENRY HUDSON 

heart of the continent — and found it pre- 
cisely where his friend Captain John Smith 
had told him he would find it^ ** under 40 
degrees " — his hopes were very high* The 
first part of the story being confirmed, it 
was a fair inference that the second part 
would be confirmed; that presently, sailing 
through the ** strait ** that he had entered, 
he would come out, as Magellan had come 
out from the other strait, upon the Pacific — 
with clear water before him to the coasts of 
Cathay* 

That glad hope must have filled his heart 
during the ensuing fortnight; and even then 
it must have died out slowly through another 
week — while the ** Half Moon *' worked her 
way northward as far as where Albany now 
stands. Twice in the course of his voyage 
inland — on September Hth, when his run 
was from Yonkers to Peekskill — he reason- 
ably may have believed that he was on the 
60 



HENRY HUDSON 

very edge of his great discovery^ As the 
river widened hugely into the Tappan Sea, 
and again widened httgely into Haverstraw 
Bay, it well may have seemed to him that he 
was come to the ocean outlet — and that in a 
few hours more he would have the waters 
of the Pacific beneath his keel* Then, as 
he passed through the Southern Gate of the 
Highlands, and thence onward, his hope 
must have waned — until on September 22d 
it vanished utterly away. Under that date 
Juet wrote in his log: ** This night, at ten 
of the clocke, our boat returned in a showre 
of raine from sounding the river; and found 
it to bee at an end for shipping to goe 

That was the end of the adventure inland* 
Juet wrote on the 23d; ** At twelve of the 
clocke we weighed, and went downe two 
leagues'*; and thereafter his log records 
their movements and their doings — some- 
6{ 



HENRY HUDSON 

times meeting with ** loving people ** with 
whom they had friendly dealings; sometimes 
meeting and having fights with people who 
were anything but loving — as the ** Half 
Moon ** dawdled slowly down the stream. 
By the 2d of October they were come abreast 
of about where Fort Lee now stands. There 
they had their last brash with the savages, 
killing ten or twelve of them without loss 
on their own side. 

After telling about the fight, Juet adds: 
** Within a while after wee got downe two 
leagues beyond that place and anchored in 
a bay [north of Hoboken], cleere from all 
danger of them on the other side of the river, 
where we saw a very good piece of ground 
[for anchorage]. And hard by it there was 
a cliffe [Wiehawken] that looked of the 
colour of a white greene, as though it were 
either copper or silver myne. And I thinke 
it to be one of them, by the trees that grow 
62 



HENRY HUDSON 

upon it. For they be all burned, and the 
other places are greene as grasse. It is on 
that side of the river that is called Manna- 
hata. There we saw no people to trouble 
«s, and rode quietly all night, b«t had much 
wind and raine/* 

In that entry the name Manna-hata was 
written for the first time, and was applied, 
not to our island but to the opposite Jersey 
shore. The explanation of Juet's record 
seems to be that the Indians known as the 
Mannahattes dwelt — or that Juet thought 
that they dwelt — on both sides of the river* 
That they did dwell on, and that they did 
give their name to, our island of Manhattan 
are facts absolutely established by the 
records of the ensuing three or four 
years. 

During October 3d the *' Half Moon '* was 
storm-bound. On the 4th, Juet records 
** Faire weather, and the wind at north north 
63 



HENRY HUDSON 

westt wee weighed and came ottt of the river 
into which we had rttnne so farre/' Thence, 
through the Upper Bay and the Narrows, 
and across the Lower Bay — with a boat oat 
ahead to sotind — they went onward into the 
Sandy Hook channel. ** And by twelve of 
the clocke we were cleere of all the inlet. 
Then we took in o«r boat, and set out 
mayne sayle and sprit sayle and oat top 
sayles, and steered away east south east, 
and sotfth east by east, off into the mayne 
sea." 

Jaet's log continues and concludes — pass- 
ing over unmentioned the mutiny that oc- 
curred before the ship's course definitely was 
set eastward — in these words: ** We con- 
tinued our course toward England, without 
seeing any land by the way, all the rest of 
this moneth of October. And on the sev- 
enth day of November (stilo novo), being 

Saturday, by the grace of God we safely ar- 
64 



HENRY HUDSON 

rived in the range of Dartmotrth, in Devon- 
shire, in the yeere 1609/'^ 

From the standpoint of the East India 
Company, Hudson's quest upon our coast 
and into o«r river — the most frtiitftfl of all 
his adventurings, since the planting of oar 
city was the outcome of it — was a failure. 
Hessel Gerritz (I6I3) wrote: ** All that he 
did in the west in J 609 was to exchange his 
merchandise for furs in Nev/ France/* And 
Hudson himself, no doubt, rated his great 

* From Mr. Brodhead's ** History of the State of 
New York ** I reproduce the following note, that tells 
of the little "Half Moon's'* dismal ending: **The sub- 
sequent career of the *HaIf Moon' may» perhaps, in- 
terest the curious. The small * ship book,* before 
referred to, which I found, in 1 84 1, in the Company's 
archives at Amsterdam, besides recording the return 
of the yacht on the 1 5th of July, 1 610, states that on 
the 2d of May, 1611, she sailed, in company with 
other vessels, to the East Indies, under the command 
of Laurens Reael; and that on the 6th of March, 1 61 5, 
she was * wrecked and lost * on the island of Mauri- 
tius.** 

65 



HENRY HUDSON 

accomplishment — on which so large a part 
of his fame rests enduringly — as a mere 
waste of energy and of time. I hope that he 
knows abo«tt and takes a comforting pride 
in — over there in the Shades — the great city 
which owes its founding to that seemingly 
bootless voyage! 



IX 




HAT happened to Htidson when 
he reached Dartmotith has been 
recorded; andt broadly, why it 
happened* Hessel Gerritz wrote 
that ^*he . ♦ ♦ returned safely to 
England, where he was accused of having 
undertaken a voyage to the detriment 
of his own country/* Van Meteren wrote: 
** A long time elapsed, through contrary 
winds, before the Company could be in- 
formed of the arrival of the ship [the ** Half 
Moon **] in England* Then they ordered 
the ship and crew to return [to Holland] as 
soon as possible* But when they were go- 
ing to do so, Henry Hudson and the other 
67 



HENRY HUDSON 

Englishmen of the ship were commanded by 
government there not to leave England but 
to serve their own country/* Obviously, 
international trade jealousies were at the 
root of the matter. Conceivably, as I have 
stated, the Muscovy Company, a much in- 
terested party, was the prime mover in the 
seizure of Hudson out of the Dutch service. 
But we only know certainly that he was 
seized out of that service: with the result 
that he and Fate came to grips again; and 
that Fate's hold on him did not loosen until 
Death cast it off. 

Hudson's fourth, and last, voyage was not 
made for the Muscovy Company; but those 
chiefly concerned in promoting it were mem- 
bers of that Company, and two of them were 
members of the first importance in the direc- 
tion of its affairs. The adventure was set 
forth, mainly, by Sir Dudley Digges, Sir 
Thomas Smith, and Master John Wolsten- 
68 



HENRY HUDSON 

holme — who severally are commemorated 
in the Arctic by Smith's Sotmdt Cape 
Digges, and Cape Wolstenhohne — and the 
expedition got away from London in 
** the barke 'Discovery'" on April 17, 
I6I0. 

Ptirchas wrote a nearly contemporary 
history of this voyage that included three 
strictly contemporary documents: two of 
them certainly written aboard the ** Dis- 
covery"; and the third either written 
aboard the ship on the voyage home, as is 
possible, or not long after the ship had 
arrived in England. 

The first of these documents is ** An Ab- 
stract of the Journal of Master Henry Hud- 
son/' This is Hudson's own log, but badly 
mutilated. It begins on the day of sailing, 
April 1 7th, and ends on the ensuing August 
3d. There are many gaps in it, and the 
block of more than ten months is gone. The 
69 



HENRY HUDSON 

missing portionst presamablyt were destroy- 
ed by the mutineers. 

The second document is styled by Pur- 
chas: ** A Note Found in the Deske of 
Thomas Wydowse, Student in the Mathe- 
matickest hee being one of them who was 
put into the Shallop/' Concerning this poor 
'* student in the mathematickes " Prickett 
testified before the court; ** Thomas Wid- 
owes was thrust out of the ship into the 
shallop, but whether he willed them take his 
keys and share his goods, to save his life, 
this examinate knoweth not/' Practically, 
this is an assurance that he did make such 
an offer; and his despairing resistance to 
being outcast is implied also in the pathetic 
note following his name in the Trinity House 
list of the abandoned ones: ** put away in 
great distress/' There is nothing to show 
how he happened to be aboard the ** Dis- 
covery/' nor who he was. Possibly he may 
70 



HENRY HUDSON 

have been a son of the ** Richard Widowes, 
goldsmith/' who is named in the second 
charter (1609) of the Virginia Company. 
His ** Note " — cited in full later on — ex- 
hibits clearly the evil conditions that ob- 
tained aboard the ** Discovery *'; and 
especially makes clear that Jaet's mtiti- 
no«s disposition began to be manifested at 
a very early stage of the voyage* 

The third document is the most important, 
in that it gives — or professes to give — a com- 
plete history of the whole voyage. Parchas 
styles it: ** A Larger Discourse of the Same 
Voyage, and the Saccesse Thereof, written 
by Abactfcks Prickett, a servant of Sir 
Dudley Digges, whom the Mutineers had 
Saved in hope to procure his Master to worke 
their Pardon.*' Purchas wrote that ** this 
report of Prickett may happely bee suspect- 
ed by some as not so friendly to Hudson.*' 
Being essentially a bit of special pleading, 
71 



HENRY HUDSON 

intended to save his own neck and the necks 
of his companions, it has rested always un- 
der the suspicion that Purchas cast upon it^ 
Nor is it relieved from suspicion by the fact 
that it is in accord with his sworn testimony, 
and with the sworn testimony of his fellows, 
before the High Court of Admiralty when 
he and they were on trial for their lives as 
mutineers* The imperfect record of this trial 
merely shows that Prickett and all of the 
other witnesses — with the partial excep- 
tion of Byleth — told substantially the same 
story; and — as they all equally were in 
danger of hanging — that story most natural- 
ly was in their own favor and in much the 
same words. From the Trinity House 
record it appears that Prickett was ** a land 
man put in by the Adventurers *'; and in 
the court records he is described, most in- 
congruously, as a ** haberdasher ** — facts 
which place him, as his own very remarkable 
72 



HENRY HUDSON 

narrative places him, on a level much above 
that of the ordinary seamen of Hudson's 
time* 

Dr. Asher's comment ttpon Prickett's 
** Discourse,'' is a just determination of its 
value: ** Though the paper he has left us is in 
form a narrative, the author's real intention 
was much more to defend the mutineers 
than to describe the voyage* As an apolo- 
getic essay, the * Larger Discourse ' is ex- 
tremely clever* It manages to cast some, 
not too much, shadow upon Hudson himself* 
The main fault of the mutiny is thrown upon 
some men who had ceased to live when the 
ship reached home* Those who were then 
still alive are presented as guiltless, some 
as highly deserving* Prickett's account of 
the mutiny and of its cause has often been 
suspected* Even Purchas himself and Fox 
speak of it with distrust* But Prickett is 
the only eye-witness that has left us an ac- 
7 73 



HENRY HUDSON 

count of these events; and we can therefore 
not correct his statements, whether they be 
true or false/' 

My fortunate finding of contemporary 
documents, unknown to Hudson's most 
authoritative historian, has produced other 
** eye-witnesses " who have ** left us an ac- 
count of these events *'; but, obviously, their 
accounts — so harmoniously in agreement — 
do not affect the soundness of Dr. Asher's 
conclusions. The net result of it all being, 
as I have written, that our whole knowledge 
of Hudson's murder is only so much of the 
truth as his murderers were agreed upon to 
telL 



I 


I 


n 


w 



N the ruling of that, his last, ad- 
venture all of Hudson's malign 
stars seem to have been in the 
ascendant. His evil genius, Juet, 
again sailed with him as mate; and 
out of sheer good-will, apparently, he took 
along with him in the ** Discovery*' another 
villainous personage, one Henry Greene — 
who showed his gratitude for benefits con- 
ferred by joining eagerly with Juet in the 
mutiny that resulted in the murder of their 
common benefactor. 

Hudson, therefore, started on that dismal 
voyage with two firebrands in his ship's 
company — and ship's companies of those 
75 



HENRY HUDSON 

days, without help from firebrands, were 
like enough to explode into matiny of their 
own accord. I mast repeat that the sailor- 
men of Hudson's time — and until long after 
Hudson's time — were little better than 
dangerous brutes; and the savage ferocity 
that was in them was kept in check only 
by meeting it with a more savage ferocity 
on the part of their superiors* 

At the very outset of the voyage trouble 
began. Hudson wrote on April 22, when 
he was in the mouth of the Thames, off the 
Isle of Sheppey : ** I caused Master Coleburne 
to bee put into a pinke bound for London, 
with my letter to the Adventurars imparting 
the reason why I put him out of the ship.*' 
He does not add what that reason was;^ 

* Captain Lake Fox has the following: ** In the 

road of Lee, in the river Thames, he [Hudson] caused 

Master Coalbrand to be set in a pinke to be carried 

back againe to London. This Coalbrand was in every 

76 



HENRY HUDSON 

nor is there any reference in what remains 
of his log to farther difficulties with his 
crew* The newly discovered testimony of 
the mutineers, cited later, refers only to the 
final mutiny. Prickett, therefore — in part 
borne out by the '* Note ** of poor Widowes 
— is our authority for the several mutinous 
outbreaks which occurred during the voyage; 
and Prickett wrote with a vagueness — 
using such phrases as ** this day *' and **this 
time,'' without adding a date — that helped 
him to muddle his narrative in the parts 
which we want to have, but which he did not 
want to have, most clear. 
Prickett's first record of trouble refers to 

way held to be a better man than himselfe, being pttt 
in by the adventurers as his assistant, who envying 
the same (he having the command in his own hands) 
devised this coarse, to send himselfe the same way, 
thotigh in a farre worse place, as hereafter followeth/' 
Prickett tells only: ** Thwart of Sheppey, oar Master 
sent Master Colbert back to the owners with his 
letter.** 

77 



HENRY HUDSON 

some period in July^ at which time the ** Dis- 
covery*' was within the mouth of Hudson's 
Strait and was beset with ice. It reads: 
** Some of our men this day fell sicke, I will 
not say it was for fearet although I saw small 
signe of other griefe/* His next entry seems 
to date a fortnight or so later, when the ship 
was farther within the strait and tempo- 
rarily ice-bound: ** Here our Master was in 
despaire, and (as he told me after) he thought 
he should never have got out of this ice, but 
there have perished. Therefore he brought 
forth his card [chart] and showed all the com- 
pany that hee was entered above an hundred 
leagues farther than ever any English was: 
and left it to their choice whether they 
should proceed any farther — yea or nay. 
Whereupon some were of one minde and 
some of another, some wishing themselves 
at home, and some not caring where so they 
were out of the ice. But there were some 
78 



HENRY HUDSON 

who then spake words which were remember- 
ed a great while after/' This record shows 
that Hudson had with him a chart of the 
strait — presumably based on Weymouth's 
earlier (1602) exploration of it — with the 
discovery of which he popularly is credited; 
and, as Weymouth sailed into the strait a 
hundred leagues, his assertion that he had 
** entered a hundred leagues farther than 
ever any English was " obviously is an error. 
But the more important matter made clear 
by Prickett (admitting that Prickett told 
the truth) is that a dangerously ugly feeling 
was abroad among the crew nearly a year 
before that feeling culminated in the final 
tragedy. 

Prickett concludes this episode by show- 
ing that Hudson's eager desire to press on 
prevailed: ** After many words to no purpose, 
to worke we must on all hands, to get our- 
selves out and to cleere our ship." 
79 



HENRY HUDSON 

And so the ** Discovery'' went onward — 
sometimes working her way through the 
ice, sometimes sailing freely in clear water — 
until Hudson triumphantly brought her, as 
Purchas puts it, into ** a spacious sea, where- 
in he sayled above a hundred leagues South, 
confidently proud that he had won the 
passage''! It was his resolve to push on 
until he could be sure that he truly ** had 
won the passage " that won him to his death. 

When they had entered that spacious sea 
— rounding the cape which then received 
its name of Cape Wolstenholme — they came 
to where sorrel and scurvy-grass grew 
plentifully, and where there was ** great 
store of fowle." Prickett records that the 
crew urged Hudson ** to stay a daye or two 
in this place, telling him what refreshment 
might there bee had. But by no means 
would he stay, who was not pleased with the 
motion." This refers to August 3d, the day 
80 



HENRY HUDSON 

on which Hudson's log ends. Prickctt adds, 
significantly: ** So we left the fowle^ and lost 
our way downe to the South West/' 

By September, the ** Discovery*' was come 
into James Bay, at the sotjthern extremity 
of Hudson's Bay; and then it was that the 
serious trouble began* By Prickett's show- 
ing, there seems to have been a clash of 
opinions in regard to the ship's course; and 
of so violent a sort that strong measures were 
required to maintain discipline. The out- 
come was that **our Master took occasion to 
revive old matters, and to displace Robert 
Juet from being his mate, and the boat- 
swaine from his place, for the words spoken 
in the first great bay of ice." 

For what happened at that time we have 
a better authority than Prickett. The 
** Note " of Thomas "Widowes covers this 
episode; and, in covering it, throws light 
upon the mutinous conditions which pre- 
81 



HENRY HUDSON 

vailed increasingly as the voyage went on. 
As the only contemporary document giving 
Hudson's side of the matter it is of first im- 
portance — we may be very sare that it 
would not have come down to us had it been 
discovered by the mutineers — and I cite it 
here in full as Purchas prints it: 

** The tenth day of September, 161 0, after 
dinner, our Master called all the Companie 
together, to heare and beare witnesse of the 
abuse of some of the Companie (it having 
beene the request of Robert Juet), that the 
Master should redresse some abuses and 
slanders, as hee called them, against this 
Juet: which thing after the Master had ex- 
amined and heard with equitie what hee 
could say for himselfe, there were proued so 
many and great abuses, and mutinous 
matters against the Master, and [the] action 
by Juet, that there was danger to have suf- 
fered them longer: and it was fit time to 
$2 



HENRY HUDSON 

punish and cut off farther occasions of the 
like mutinies* 

** It was proved to his face, first with 
Bennet Mathew, our Trumpet^ upon our 
first sight of Island [Iceland]^ and he con- 
festt that he supposed that in the action 
would be man slaughter^ and proue bloodie 
to some. 

** Secondly, at our coming from Island, in 
hearing of the Companie, hee did threaten to 
turne the head of the Ship home from the 
action, which at that time was by our 
Master wisely pacified, hoping of amend- 
ment. 

** Thirdly, it was deposed by Philip Staffe, 
our Carpenter, and Ladlie Arnold [Arnold 
Ludlow] to his face upon the holy Bible, that 
hee perswaded them to keepe Muskets charg- 
ed, and Swords readie in their Cabbins, for 
they should be charged with shot ere the 
Voyage was over. 

83 



HENRY HUDSON 

** Fourthly, wee being pestered in the Ice, 
hee had ased words tending to mutinie, dis- 
cotiragementt and slander of the action, 
which easily took effect in those that were 
timorous; and had not the Master in time 
presented, it might easily have overthrowne 
the Voyage; and now lately being imbayed 
in a deepe Bay, which the Master had desire 
to see, for some reasons to himselfe knowne, 
his word tended altogether to put the Com- 
panie into a fray [fear] of extremitie, by 
wintering in cold: Jesting at our Master's 
hope to see Bantam by Candlemas. 

** For these and diuers other base slanders 
against the Master, hee was deposed, and 
Robert Bylot [Bileth, or Byleth], who had 
showed himself honestly respecting the good 
of the action, was placed in his stead the 
Masters Mate. 

** Also Francis Clement the Boatson, at 
this time was put from his Office, and 
84 



HENRY HUDSON 

William Wilson, a man thought more fit, 
prehtred to his place* This man had basely 
carried himself e to otir Master and the action* 

** Also Adrian Mooter was appointed Boat- 
sons mate: and a promise by the Master, that 
from this day Juats wages should remain to 
Bylott and the Boatsons overplus of wages 
should bee equally dimded betweene Wilson 
and one John King,to the owners good liking, 
one of the Quarter Masters, who had very 
well carryed themselves to the furtherance 
of the businesse. 

** Also the Master promised, if the Of- 
fenders yet behaued themselves henceforth 
honestly, hee would be a means for their good, 
and that hee would forget iniuries, with 
other admonitions/' 

Hudson's fame is the brighter for this 
testament of the poor ** Student in the 
Mathematickes " whose loyalty to his com- 
mander cost him his life* At times, Hudson 
85 



HENRY HUDSON 

seems to have temporized with his mutinous 
crews* In this grave crisis he did not tem- 
porize. For cause, he disrated his chief 
officers: and so asserted in that desolate 
place, as fearlessly as he would have asserted 
it in an English harbor, that aboard his ship 
his will was law. 

But his strong action only scotched the 
mutiny. Prickett's narrative of the doings 
of the ensuing seven weeks deals with what 
he implies was purposeless sailing up and 
down James Bay. He casts reflections upon 
Hudson's seamanship in such phrases as 
" our Master would have the anchor up, 
against the mind of all who knew what be- 
longeth thereto"; and in all that he writes 
there is a perceptible note of resentment of 
the Master's doings that reflects the mu- 
tinous feeling on board. Especially does this 
feeling show in his account of their settling 
into winter quarters: ** Having spent three 
86 



HENRY HUDSON 

moncths in a labyrinth without end, being 
now the last of October, we went downe 
to the East, to the bottome of the Bay; but 
returned without speeding of that we went 
for* The next day we went to the South 
and South West, and found a place, where- 
unto we brought our ship and haled her 
aground. And this was the first of Novem- 
ber. By the tenth thereof we were frozen 

. ft 
m. 

And then the Arctic night closed down 

upon them: and with it the certainty that 

they were prisoners in that desolate freezing 

darkness until the sun should come again 

and set them free. 



XI 



N 






STT 




ERVES go to pieces in the Arctic. 
Captain Back, who commanded 
the *^ Terror" on her first northern 
voyage (1836), has told how there 
comes, as the icy night drags on, 
** a weariness of heart, a blank feeling, which 
gets the better of the whole man"; and 
Colonel Brainard, of the Greely expedition, 
wrote: ** Take any set of men, however 
carefully selected, and let them be thrown 
as intimately together as are the members of 
an exploring expedition — hearing the same 
voices, seeing the same faces, day after day 
— and they will soon become weary of one 
another's society and impatient of one an- 
other's faults/' 



HENRY HUDSON 

The Greely expedition — composed of 
twenty-five men, of whom only seven were 
found alive by the rescue party — in many 
ways parallels, and pointedly illustrates, the 
Hudson expedition. There was dissension 
in Greely's command almost from the start. 
Surgeon Pavy's angry protests compelled the 
sending back in the '* Proteus " — paralleling 
the sending back of Coleburne in the pink — 
of one member of the company; and Lieu- 
tenant Kislingbury — paralleling Juet's in- 
subordination — objected so strongly to 
Greely 's regulations that he gave in his 
resignation and tried, unsuccessfully, to 
overtake the '* Proteus" and go home in her. 
Being returned to Fort Conger, he was not 
restored to his rank, and remained — as Juet 
remained after being superseded — a mal- 
content. 

One of the commentators on the expedi- 
tion thus has summarized the conditions of 
8 89 



HENRY HUDSON 

that dreadful winter of \ZZZ-M\ ** It was 
now OctoJ^er, and the situation of the ex- 
plorers was becoming desperate, but the 
bickerings seem to have increased with their 
peril. As the weary days of starvation and 
death wore on, nearly every member of the 
party developed a grievance. Israel was 
reprimanded by Greely for falsely accusing 
Brainard of unfairness m the distribution 
of articles. Bender annoyed the whole camp 
by his complaints regarding his bed-clothes; 
Pavy and Henry accused Fredericks, the 
cook, of not giving them their fair share of 
food; and Pavy and Kislingbury had a 
quarrel that barely stopped short of blows. 
Then Jewell was accused of selecting the 
heaviest dishes of those issued . . . Bender 
and Schneider had a fist fight in their sleep- 
ing bag; and on one occasion Bender was 
so violent that a general mutiny was immi- 
nent, and Greely says in his written record: 
90 



a) m 

z 



m 






33 n 
p m 




HENRY HUDSON 

* If I could have got Long's gun I would have 
killed him/ Bender brutally treated Elli- 
sont who was very weak; and Schneider 
abased Whistler as he was dying — the second 
occurrence of the kind. ♦ ♦ . The thefts of food 
by Henry, and his execution, formed a cul- 
mination to the dissensions, though it did 
not entirely stop them* Never was there 
a more terrible example of the demoralizing 
effects of the conditions of Arctic life and 
privations upon men who in other circum- 
stances were able to dwell at peace with 
their fellows/' 

Out of those conditions came like results 
aboard Hudson's ship: discontent develop- 
ing into insubordination; hatred of the com- 
mander; hatred of each other; petty squab- 
blings leading on to tragedies — as minor ills 
were magnified into catastrophes and little 
injuries into deadly wrongs* Strictly in 
keeping with the mean traditions of the 
91 



HENRY HUDSON 

Arctic is the fact that the point of departure 
of the final mutiny was a wrangle that arose 
over the ownership of ** a gray cloth gowne/* 

Prickett records: ** About the middle of 
this moneth of November dyed John Will- 
iams our Gunner. God pardon the Masters 
uncharitable dealing with this man. Now 
for that I am come to speake of him, out of 
whose ashes (as it were) that unhappie deed 
grew which brought a scandall upon all that 
are returned home, and upon the action it- 
self, the multitude (like the dog) running 
after the stone, but not at the caster; there- 
fore, not to wronge the living nor slander 
the dead, I will (by the leave of God) deliver 
the truth as neere as I can/* 

Prickett's deliverance of the truth leaves 
much to be desired. Without giving any 
information in regard to Hudson's ** un- 
charitable dealing ** with the gunner, he 
takes a fresh departure in these words: 
92 



HENRY HUDSON 

** Yotf shall understand that our Master 
kept (in his house at London) a young man 
named Henrie Greene, borne in Kent, of 
worshipfull parents, but by his leud life and 
conversation hee had lost the good will of 
all his frinds, and had spent all that hee 
had. This man our Master would have to 
sea with him because hee could write: well. 
. ♦ ♦ This Henrie Greene was not set down in 
the owners booke, nor any wages for him. 
... At Island the Surgeon and hee fell out 
in Dutch, and hee beat him ashoare in 
English, which set all the Companie in a 
rage soe that wee had much adoe to get the 
Surgeon aboord. [This curiously parallels 
the fight between Surgeon Pavy and Lieu- 
tenant Kislingbury] . . . Robert Juet, (the 
Masters Mate) would needs burne his finger 
in the embers, and tolde the Carpenter a long 
tale (when hee was drunke) that our Master 
had brought in Greene to cracke his credit 
93 



HENRY HUDSON 

that should displease him: which wordes 
came to the Masters earest who when hee 
understood it, would have gone back to 
Islandt when hee was fortie leagues from 
thence^ to have sent home his Mate Robert 
Juet in a fisherman. But, being otherwise 
perswaded, all was welL . . . Now when our 
Gunner was dead, and (as the order is in such 
cases) if the Company stand in neede of any 
thing that belonged to the man deceased, 
then it is brought to the mayne mast, and 
there sold to them that will give moste for 
the same. This Gunner had a gray cloth 
gowne, which Greene prayed the Master to 
friend him so much as to let him have it, 
paying for it as another would give. The 
Master saith hee should, and thereupon hee 
answered some, that sought to have it, that 
Greene should have it, and none else, and 
soe it rested. 
** Now out of season and time the Master 
94 



HENRY HUDSON 

calleth the Carpenter to goe in hand with an 
house on shoare, which at the beginning out 
Master would not heare, when it might have 
been done. The Carpenter told him^ that 
the snow and froste were sttch, as hee neither 
could nor would goe in hand with such 
worke. Which when our Master heard, hee 
ferreted him out of his cabbin to strike him, 
calling him by many foule names, and threat- 
ening to hang him. The Carpenter told him 
that hee knew what belonged to his place 
better than himselfe, and that he was no 
house carpenter. So this passed, and the 
house was (after) made with much labour, 
but to no end* The next day after the 
Master and the Carpenter fell out, the Car- 
penter took his peece and Henrie Greene 
with him, for it was an order that none 
should goe out alone, but one with a peece 
and another with a pike* This did move 
the Master soe much the more against 
95 



HENRY HUDSON 

Henrie Greene, that Robert Billot his Mate 
[who had been promoted to Juet's place] 
mttst have the gowne, and had it delivered 
«nto him; which when Henrie Greene saw he 
challenged the Masters promise [to him]. But 
the Master did so raile on Greene, with so 
many words of disgrace, telling him that all 
his friends would not trust him with twenty 
shillings, and therefore why should hee. As 
for wages hee had none; nor none should 
have if hee did not please him well. Yet 
the Master had promised him to make his 
wages as good as any mans in the ship; and 
to have him one of the Princes guard when 
we came home. But you shall see how the 
devil out of this soe wrought with Greene 
that he did the Master what mischiefe hee 
could in seeking to discredit him, and to 
thrust him and many other honest men out 
of the ship in the end. To speake of all our 
trouble in this time of Winter (which was so 
% 



HENRY HUDSON 

colde, as it lamed the most of our Companic 
and my selfe doe yet feele it) would bee too 
tedious/* 

That is all that Prickett tells about their 
wintering; but what he leaves untold, as 
** too tedioust*' easily may be filled in. Be- 
ginning with that brabble over the **gray 
cloth gowne/' there must have gone on in 
Hudson's party the same bickerings and 
wranglings that went on in Greely's party, 
and the same development of small ani- 
mosities into burning hatreds. And it all, 
with Hudson's people, must have been 
rougher and fiercer and deadlier than it was 
with Greely's people: because Hudson's crew 
was of a time when sea-men, for cause, were 
called sea-wolves; while Greely's crew was 
the better (yet exhibited scant evidence of 
it) by an additional two centuries and a half 
of civilization, and was made up (though 
with little to show for it) of picked men. 
97 



XII 







HE end came in the spring-time* 
Throtigh the winter the party had 
** stfch store of fowie/' and later 
had for a while so good a supply of 
fisht that starvation was staved 
off. When the ice broke xsp, about the mid- 
dle of June, Hudson sailed from his winter 
quarters and went out a little way into Hud- 
son's Bay. There they were caught and held 
in the floating ice — with their stores almost 
exhausted, and with no more fowl nor fish 
to be had. Then the nip of hunger came; 
and with it came openly the mutiny that 
secretly had been fermenting through those 
months of cold and gloom. 
98 



HENRY HUDSON 

Prickett writes: ** Being th«s in the ice 
on Satardayt the one and twentieth of June, 
at nightt Wilson the boat swayne, and Henry 
Greene^ came to mee lying (in my cabbin) 
lamet and told mee that they and the rest of 
their associates would shift the company 
and t«rne the Master and all the sicke men 
into the shallop^ and let them shift for them- 
selves* For there was not fourteen daies 
victaall left for all the company^ at that 
poore allowance they were at^ and that there 
they lay, the Master not caring to goe one 
way or other: and that they had not eaten 
any thing these three dayes, and therefore 
were resolute, either to mend or end, and 
what they had begun they would goe 
through with it, or dye/* 

According to his own account, Prickett 
made answer to this precious pair of scoun- 
drels that he ** marvelled to heare so much 
from them, considering that they were 
99 



HENRY HUDSON 

married men, and had wives and children, 
and that for their sakes they should not 
commit so foule a thing in the sight of God 
and man as that would bee **; to which 
Greene replied that ** he knew the worst, 
which was, to be hanged when hee came 
home, and therefore of the two he would 
rather be hanged at home than starved 
abroad/' With that deliverance ** Henry 
Greene went his way, and presently came 
Juet, who, because he was an ancient man, 
I hoped to have found some reason in him. 
But hee was worse than Henry Greene, for 
he sware plainly that he would justifie this 
dzzd when he came home/' 

More of the conspirators came to Prickett 
to urge him to join them in their intended 
crime. We have his weak word for it that he 
refused, and that he tried to stay them; to 
which he weakly adds: ** I hoped that some 
one or other would giY^ some notice, either 
100 



HENRY HUDSON 

to the Carpenter [or to] John King or the 
Master/' That he did not try to giw^ **some 
notice ** himself is the blackest count against 
him* The just inference may be drawn 
from his narrative, as a whole, that he was 
a liar; and from this particular section of 
it the farther inference may be drawn that 
he was a coward. 

In the dawn of the Sunday morning the 
outbreak came. Prickett tells that it began 
by clapping the hatch over John King (one 
of the faithful men), who had gone down 
into the hold for water; and continues: ** In 
the meane time Henrie Greene and another 
went to the carpenter [Philip Staf f e] and held 
him with a taike till the Master came out of 
his cabbin (which hee soone did); then came 
John Thomas and Bennet before him, while 
Wilson bound his arms behind him. He 
asked them what they meant. They told 
him he should know when he was in the 



HENRY HUDSON 

shallop. Now Jtiett while this was a-doing, 
came to John King into the hold^ who was 
provided for him, for he had got a sword of 
his own, and kept him at a bay, and might 
have killed him, bat others came to helpe 
him, and so he came up to the Master. The 
Master called to the Carpenter, and told him 
that he was bound, but I heard no answer 
he made. Now Arnold Lodio and Michael 
BtJte rayled at them, and told them their 
knaverie wotild show itselfe. Then was the 
shallop haled up to the ship side, and the 
poore sicke and lame men were called upon 
to get them out of their cabbins into the 
shallop. 

** The Master called to me, who came out 
of my cabbin as well as I could, to the hatch 
way to speake with him: where, on my knees, 
I besought them, for the love of God, to 
remember themselves, and to doe as they 
would be done unto. They bade me keepe 
102 



HENRY HUDSON 

myself e wcIU and get me into my cabbin; 
not suffering the Master to speake with me. 
Bat when I came into my cabbin againe, 
hee called to me at the home which gave 
light into my cabbin^ and told me that J«et 
would overthrow as all; nay (said I) it is that 
villaine Henrie Greene, and I spake it not 
softly. Now was the Carpenter at libertie, 
who asked them if they would bee hanged 
when they came home: and, as for himself e, 
hee said, hee woald not stay in the ship un- 
less they would force him. They bade him 
goe then, for they would not stay him. ♦ . . 
** Now were all the poore men in the 
shallop, whose names are as followeth: 
Henrie Hudson, John Hudson, Arnold Lodio, 
Sidrack Faner, Philip Staffe, Thomas Wood- 
house or Wydhouse, Adam Moore, Henrie 
[sic] King, Michael Bute. The Carpenter got 
of them a peece, and powder, and shot, and 
some pikes, an iron pot, with some meale, 
9 J03 



HENRY HUDSON 

and other things. They stood out of the ice, 
the shallop being fast to the sterne of the 
shippe, and so (when they were nigh out, 
for I cannot say they were cleane otit) they 
cwt her head fast from the sterne of out ship, 
then oat with their top sayles, and toward 
the east they stood in a cleere sea. 

** In the end they took in their top sayles, 
righted their helme, and lay tinder their fore 
sayle till they had ransacked and searched 
all places in the ship. In the hold they 
found one of the vessels of meale whole, and 
the other halfe spent, for wee had but two; 
wee found also two firkins of butter, some 
twentie seven pieces of porke, halfe a bushell 
of pease; but in the Masters cabbin we found 
two hundred of bisket cakes, a pecke of 
meale, of beere to the quantitie of a butt, 
one with another. Now it was said that 
the shallop was come within sight, they 
let fall the main sayle, and out with their top 
104 



1 



HENRY HUDSON 

saylest and fly as from an enemy. Then 
I prayed them yet to remember themselves; 
but William Wilson (more than the rest) 
wottid heare of no such matter. Comming 
nigh the east shore they cast about, and 
stood to the west and came to an iland and 
anchored. . . . Heere we lay that night, and 
the best part of the next day, in all which 
time we saw not the shallop, or ever after/' 
That is the story of Hudson's murder as 
we get it from his murderers; and even from 
Prickett's biased narrative so complete a 
case is made out against the mutineers that 
there is comfort in knowing that some of 
them, and the worst of them, came quickly 
to their just reward. 



XIII 




MONTH later, July 28, a halt 
was made in the mouth of Hud- 
son's Strait to search for **fowIe ** 
for food on the homeward voyage. 
There ** savages ** were encounter- 
ed, seemingly of so friendly a nature that on 
the day following the first meeting with them 
a boat's crew — of which Prickett was one — 
went ashore unarmed. Then came a sudden 
attack. Prickett himself was set upon in 
the boat — of which, ** being lame,'* he had 
been left keeper — by a savage whom he 
managed to kill. What happened to the 
others he thus tells: 

** Whiles I was thus assaulted in the boat, 
106 



HENRY HUDSON 

otif men were set upon on the shoare. John 
Thomas and William Wilson had their 
bowels cut, and Michael Perse and Henry 
Greene, being mortally wounded, came 
tumbling into the boat together. When 
Andrew Moter saw this medley, hee came 
running downe the rockes and leaped into 
the sea, and so swamme to the boat, hang- 
ing on the Sterne thereof, till Michael Perse 
took him in, who manfully made good the 
head of the boat against the savages, that 
pressed sore upon us* Now Michael Perse 
had got an hatchet, wherewith I saw him 
strike one of them, that he lay sprawling 
in the sea. Henry Greene crieth CoragiOf 
and layeth about him with his truncheon* 
I cryed to them to cleere the boat, and 
Andrew Moter cryed to bee taken in. The 
savages betooke them to their bowes and 
arrowes, which they sent amongst us, 
wherewith Henry Greene was slaine out- 
107 



HENRY HUDSON 

right, and Michael Perse received many 
wounds, and so did the rest. Michael Perse 
cleereth [unfastened] the boate, and puts it 
from the shoate, and helpeth Andrew Moter 
in; but in turning of the boat I received a 
cruell wound in my backe with an arrow* 
Michael Perse and Andrew Moter rowed the 
boate away, which, when the savages saw, 
they ranne to their boats, and I feared they 
would have launched them to have followed 
us, but they did not, and our ship was in the 
middle of the channel and could not see us. 
** Now, when they had rowed a good way 
from the shoare, Michael Perse fainted, and 
could row no more. Then was Andrew 
Moter driven to stand in the boat head, 
and waft to the ship, which at first saw us 
not, and when they did they could not tell 
what to make of us, but in the end they 
stood for us, and so tooke us up. Henry 
Greene was throwne out of the boat into the 
JOS 



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altiiiult of 
the Siuuie. 




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t\)t rjn0,anDfettbe Alhidadaapavnfttlje feunne,anDraT?feit, 
o;put it Dotonc in tlje quarter t^at i» graouate.tjntill tfje beamr^f 
oft^c^unne enter in br»tl)e little Ijoleoftljcotljer tablet o; va^^ 
feDpIate,an6piecifcl?bp tljeotljerlitle ijoleof tl)e otljer tablet. 
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itC^ctDCtljin tl)c quarter tljat ig flrabuatelbcginnincfrointljC 
l^o^ijontall l?ne) fo man? Degree? of ^eifi^t Ijatlj tl)t pmnt. 
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bef^neb^tlieUtleljole^. 

The 



AN ASTROLABIE. 1596 
THE ARTE OF NAVIGATION.' LONDON. EDITION 1596 



HENRY HUDSON 

sea, and the rest were had aboard, the savage 
[with whom Prickett had fought] being yet 
alive, yet without sense. But they died all 
there that day, William Wilson swearing 
and cursing in most fearefull manner. 
Michael Perse lived two dayes after, and 
then diQd* Thus you have heard the trag- 
icall end of Henry Greene and his mates, 
whom they called captaine, these four being 
the only lustie men in all the ship.** 

I am glad that Prickett got ** a cruell 
wound in the backe.** "Were it not that by 
the killing of him we should have lost his 
narrative, I should wish that that weak 
villain had been killed along with the 
stronger ones. They were strong. It was 
a brave fight that they made; and Henry 
Greene's last recorded word, ** Coragio! ** 
was worthy of the lips of a better man. 
But he and the others eminently deserved 
the death that the savages gave them, and it 
J09 



HENRY HUDSON 

is good to know that Hudson's murder so 
soon was avenged. Juet's equally exem- 
plary punishment, equally deserved, came a 
little later. On the homeward voyage the 
whole company got to the very ^dg^f and 
Juet passed beyond the edgCf of starvation. 
When the ship was only sixty or seventy 
leagues from Ireland, where she made her 
landfall, Prickett tells that he ** dyed for 
meere want.** 

What befell the survivors of the ** Dis- 
covery's *' crew, on the ship's return to 
England, has remained until now unknown; 
and even now the account of them is incon- 
clusive. In the Latin edition of the year 
I6I3 of his **Detectio Freti " Hessel Ger- 
ritz wrote: ** They exposed Hudson and the 
other officers in a boat on the open sea, and 
returned into their country. There they 
have been thrown into prison for their 
crime, and will be kept in prison until their 
no 



HENRY HUDSON 

captain shall be safely brought home. For 
that purpose some ships have been sent o«t 
last year by the late Prince of Wales and by 
the Directors of the Moscovia Company, 
abotJt the return of which nothing as yet 
has been heard/' 

For three hundred years that statement 
of fact has ended Hudson's story. The 
fragmentary documents which I have been 
so fortunate as to obtain from the Record 
Office carry it a little, only a little, farther^ 
Unhappily they stop short — giving no as- 
surance that the mutineers got to the gal- 
lows that they deserved. All that they 
prove is that the few survivors were brought 
to trial: charged with having put the master 
of their ship, and others, ** into a shallop, 
without food, drink, fire, clothing, or any 
necessaries, and then maliciously abandon- 
ing them: so that they came thereby to their 

death, and miserably perished." 
in 



HENRY HUDSON 

There, tinfinishedt the record ends* "What 
penalty, or that any penalty, was exacted of 
those who sarvived to be tried for Hudson's 
murder remains unknown. Their ignoble 
fate is hidden in a sordid darkness: fitly in 
contrast with his noble fate — that lies re- 
tired within a glorious mystery* 



XIV 




UDSON has no cause to quarrel 
with the rating that has been fixed 
for him in the eternal balances. 
All that he lost (or seemed to lose) 
in life has been more than made 
good to him in the flowing of the years 
since he fought out with Fate his last losing 
round. 

In his River and Strait and Bay he has 
such monuments set up before the whole 
world as have been awarded to only one 
other navigator. And they are his justly. 
Before his time, those great waterways, and 
that great inland sea, were mere hazy geo- 
graphical concepts. After his time they 



HENRY HUDSON 

were clearly defined geographical facts^ He 
did — and those who had seen them before 
him did not — make them effectively known. 
Here, in this city of New York — which owes 
to him its being — he has a monument of a 
different and of a nobler sort* Here, as- 
suredly, down through the coming ages his 
memory will be honored actively, his name 
will be in men's mouths ceaselessly, so long 
as the city shall endure* 

And I hold that Hudson's fame, as a most 
brave explorer and as a great discoverer, is 
not dimmed by the fact that up to a certain 
point he followed in other men's footsteps; 
nor do I think that his glory is lessened by 
his seeming predestination to go on fixed 
lines to a fixed end* On the contrary, I 
think that his fame is brightened by his 
willingness to follow, that he might — as he 
did — surpass his predecessors; and that his 
glory is increased by the resolute firmness 
114 



HENRY HUDSON 

with which he played up to his destiny* 
Holding fast to his great purpose to find a 
passage to the East by the North, he com- 
pelled every one of Fate's deals against him 
— until that last deal — to turn in his favor; 
and even in that last deal he won a death 
so heroically woful that exalted pity for him, 
almost as much as admiration for his great 
achievements, has kept his fame through 
the centuries very splendidly alive* 



NEWL Y- DISCO VERED 
DOCUMENTS 



1 


I 


CI m 


w 



CONCERNING THE DOCUMENTS 

N an article entitled ^* English 
Ships in the Time of James 1*/* 
by R« G* Marsden, M, A*, in Volume 
XIX of the Transactions of the 
Royal Historical Society, I came 
upon this entry: ** * Discovery ' (or * Hope- 
wellt' or * Good Hope ') Hudson's ship on 
his last voyage; Baffin also sailed in her/' 
A list of references to mantjscript records 
followed; and one of the entries, relating to 
the High Co«rt of Admiralty, read: ** Exam* 
42, 25 Jan, 1611. trial of some of the crew 
for the murder of Hudson/' 



Note — The varying spelling, «WSt obvious 
proper names, follows that of the documents* 
119 



HENRY HUDSON 

As I have stated elsewhere, none of the 
historians who has dealt with matters relat- 
ing to Hudson has told what became of his 
murderers when they returned to England. 
Hessel Gerritz alone has given the informa- 
tion (161 3, two years after the event) that 
they ** were to be '* put on trial. Whether 
they were, or were not, put on trial has re- 
mained unknown. Any one who has en- 
gaged in the fascinating pursuit of elusive 
historical truth will understand, therefore, 
my warm delight, and my warm gratitude 
to Mr. Marsden, when this clew to hitherto 
unpublished facts concerning Hudson was 
placed in my hands. 

Following it has not led me so far as, in 
my first enthusiasm, I hoped that it would 
lead me. The search that I have caused to 
be made in the Record Office, in London, 
has not brought to light even all of the doc- 
uments referred to by Mr. Marsden. The 
120 



HENRY HUDSON 

record of the trial is incomplete; and, most 
regrettablyt the most essential of all the 
documents is lacking: the judgment of the 
Court* So far as the mutineers are concern- 
edf all that these documents prove is that 
they actually were brought to trial: what 
penalty was put upon them, or if any penalty 
was put upon them, still remains unknown* 
But in another way these documents do 
possess a high value, and are of an exception- 
al interest, in that they exhibit the sworn 
testimony of six eye-witnesses to the fact 
as to the circumstances of Hudson's out- 
casting. Five of these witnesses now are 
produced (in print) for the first time* The 
sixth, Abacuck Prickett, was the author of 
the ** Larger Discourse ** that hitherto has 
been the sole source of information con- 
cerning the final mutiny on board the ** Dis- 
covery*'' That Prickett's sworn testimony 
and unsworn narrative substantially are in 
121 



HENRY HUDSON 

agreement, as they are, is not surprising; 
nor does such agreement appreciably affect 
the truth of either of them* Sworn or un- 
sworn, Prickett was not a person from 
whom pure truth could be expected when, 
as in this case, he was trying to tell a story 
that would save him from being hanged. 
Neither is the corroboration of Prickett *s 
story by the five newly produced witnesses 
— they equally being in danger of hanging — 
in itself convincing* But certain of the 
details (e. g*, the door between Hudson's 
cabin and the hold) brought out in this new 
testimony, together with the way in which 
it all hangs together, does raise the proba- 
bility that the crew of the '* Discovery "' 
had more than a colorable grievance against 
Hudson, and does imply that Prickett's ob- 
viously biased narrative may be less far 
from the truth than heretofore it has been 

held to be. 

122 



HENRY HUDSON 

The summing wp of the Trinity House 
examination gives the cr«x of the matter: 
** They all charge the Master with wasting 
[u e»t filching] the victuals by a scuttle made 
out of his cabin into the hold, and it appears 
that he fed his favorites, as the surgeon, 
etc., and kept others at ordinary allowance. 
AH say that, to save some from starving, 
they were content to put away [abandon] so 
many.'' It was from this presentment that 
the Elder Brethren drew the just conclusion 
— as we know from Prickett's characteristic 
denial under oath that he ** ever knew or 
hea,rd ** such expression of their opinion — 
that ** they deserved to be hanged for the 



same.'' 



In the testimony of Edward Wilson, the 
surgeon — one of the ** favorites " — the point 
is made, credited to Staffe, that ** the reason 
why the Master should soe favour to give 

meate to some of the companie and not the 
123 



HENRY HUDSON 

rest " was because ** it was necessary that 
some of them should be kepte upp *' — in 
other wordst that some members of the crew, 
without regard to the needs of the remainder, 
should receive food enough to givz them 
strength to work the ship. This is an agree- 
ment, substantially, with the charge pre- 
ferred against Hudson in the ** Larger Dis- 
course''; upon which Dr* Asher made the 
exculpating comment: ** But even if this 
charge be a true one, Hudson's motives were 
certainly honorable; with such men as he 
had under his orders it was dangerous to 
deal openly. Their crime had no other 
cause than the fear that he would continue 
his search and expose them to new priva- 
tions: and it seems that in providing for 
this emergency, he had even increased his 
dangers/' Dr. Asher's excuse, I should add, 
refers more to concealment of food than to 
unfair apportionment. 
124 



HENRY HUDSON 

I have no desire to play the part of devil's 
advocate; but — in the guise of that person- 
age under his more respectable title of Pro- 
motor Fidei — it is my duty to point out that 
if Hudson deliberately did ** keep «p '' him- 
self and a favored few by putting the re- 
mainder on starvation rations — no matter 
what may have been his motives — he ex- 
ceeded his ship-master's right over his crew 
of life and death* His doing so, if he did 
do sOt did not justify mutiny* Mutiny is 
a sea -crime that no provocation justifies. 
But if the point at issue was who should 
diz of hunger that the others should have 
food enough to keep them alive, then the 
mutineers could claim — and this is what 
virtually they did claim in making their 
defence — that they did by the Master in 
a swift and bold way precisely what in 
a slow and underhand way he was doing 
by them* 

{25 



HENRY HUDSON 

In the more agreeable role of Postulator, 
I may add that this charge against Hudson 
— while not disproved — is not sustained. 
The one witness, Robert Byleth, of whom 
reputable record survives — the only witness, 
indeed, of whom we have any record what- 
ever beyond that of the case in hand — did 
not even refer to it. In his Admiralty Court 
examination — he is not included in the 
record of those examined at the Trinity 
House — he said no more than that the ** dis- 
content ** of the crew was ** by occasion of 
the want of victualls.*' Neither in his state- 
ment in chief nor in his cross-examination 
did he charge Hudson with wrong-doing of 
any kind. Byleth himself does not seem 
to have been looked upon as a criminal: as 
is implied by his being sent with Captain 
Button (16 1 2) on the exploring expedition 
toward the northwest that was directed to 
search for Hudson; by his sailing two voy- 
(26 



HENRY HUDSON 

ages (161 5- 161 6) with Baffin; and, still 
more strongly, by the fact that he was em- 
ployed on each of these occasions by the 
very persons — members of the Muscovy 
Company and others — who most wowld have 
desired to ptmish him had they believed that 
punishment was his j ast desert* That he did 
not testify against Hudson must count, there- 
fore, as a strong point in Hudson's favor; so 
strong — his credibility and theirs being con- 
sidered comparatively — that it goes far tow- 
ard offsetting the testimony of the haber- 
dasher and the barber - surgeon and the 
common sailors by whom Hudson was 
accused. 

But it is useless to try to draw substantial 
conclusions from these fragmentary records. 
The most that can be d^d\ic^d from them — 
and even that, because of Byleth's silence, 
hesitantly — is that in a general way they do 
tend to confirm Prickett's narrative. They 
127 



HENRY HUDSON 

would be more to my liking if this were not 
the case. 

A curiotis iea,ture of the trial of the mu- 
tineers is its long delay — more than five 
years. The Trinity House authorities acted 
promptly. Almost immediately upon the 
return to London of the eight survivors of 
the ** Discovery ** five of them (Prickett, 
Wilson, Clemens, Motter and Mathews — no 
mention is made in the record of Byleth, 
Bond, and the boy Syms) were brought be- 
fore the Masters (October 24, 1611) for ex- 
amination. In a single day their examina- 
tion was concluded: with the resulting ver- 
dict of the Masters upon their actions that 
they ** deserved to be hanged for the same.*' 
Three months later, 25 January, \6U (O* S.), 
the matter was before the Instance and 
Prize Records division of the High Court of 
Admiralty; of which hearing the only record- 
ed result is the examination of the barber- 
128 



HENRY HUDSON 

surgeon, Edward Wilson. Then, apparently, 
the mtttineers were left to their own devices 
for five full years. 

So far as the records show, no action was 
taken until the trial began in Oyer and Ter- 
miner. The date of that beginning cannot 
be fixed precisely — there being no date at- 
tached to the True Bill found against Bileth, 
Prickett, "Wilson, Hotter, Bond, and Sims. 
(For some unknown reason Mathews and 
Clemens were not included in the indict- 
ment; although Clemens, certainly, was with- 
in the jurisdiction of the Court.) The date 
may be fixed very closely, however, by the 
fact that the two most important witnesses, 
Prickett and Byleth, were examined on 7 
February, 1 6 16 (0. S.). Three months 
later, 13 May, 161 7 (0. S.), Clemens was ex- 
amined. And that is all! There, in the 
very middle of the trial — leaving in the air 
the examinations of the other witnesses and 
J29 



HENRY HUDSON 

the jtidgments of the Court — the records 
end» 

Had document No* 2 of the Oyer and Ter- 
miner series been founds some explanation of 
the five years^ delay of the trial might have 
been forthcoming; and the exact date of its 
beginning probably would have been fixed. 
As the records stand, they leave «s — so far 
as the trial is concerned — with a series of in- 
creasingly disappointing negatives: We do 
not know why two of the crew — one of them 
certainly within reach of the Court — were 
not included in the indictment; nor why the 
trial was postponed for so long a time; nor 
certainly when it ended; nor, worst of all, 
what was its result. 

I should be glad to believe that the muti- 
neers — even including Byleth, who was the 
best of them — came to the hanging that the 
Elder Brethren of the Trinity, in their off- 
hand just judgment, declared that they 
J30 



HENRY HUDSON 

deserved. If they did^ there is no known 
record of their hanging. A ctjriotisly sug- 
gestive interestt however^ attaches to the 
fact that at j«st about the time when the 
trial ended one of them, and the only con- 
spicuous one of them, seems permanently to 
have disappeared. That most careful in- 
vestigator the late Mr. Alexander Brown 
was unable to find any sure trace of Byleth 
after his second voyage with Baffin, which 
was made in March- August, I6I6. Seven 
months later, as the subjoined records prove, 
he was on trial for his life. It seems to me 
to be at least a possibility that the result of 
that trial may have led directly to his per- 
manent disappearance. If it didt and if 
Prickett and the others in a like way dis- 
appeared with him, then was justice done 
on Hudson's murderers. 



THE DOCUMENTS 



Trinity House MS. Transactions. t609- 

1625. 

(24 October 1611) 

The 9 men turned out of the ship: 
Henry Hudson, master. 
John Hudson, his son. 
Arnold Ladley. 
John KLing, quarter master. 
Michael Butt, married. 
Thomas Woodhouse, a mathematician, put 
away in great distress. 
Adame Moore. 
Philip Staff, carpenter. 
Syracke Fanner, married. 

John Williams, died on 9 October. 
— I vet [Juet], died coming home. 

Slain: 

Henry Greene. 

132 



HENRY HUDSON 

William Wilson. 
John Thomas. 
Michell Peerce. 

Men that came home: 
Robart Billet, master. 
Abecocke Prickett, a land man put in by 
the Adventurers. 

Edward Wilson, surgeon. 
Francis Clemens, boteson. 
Adrian Motter. 

Bennet Mathues, a land man. 
Nicholas Syms, boy. 
Silvantis Bond, cotiper. 

After Hudson was put out, the company 
elected Billet as master. 

Abacuck Pricket, sworn, says the ship began 
to return about 1 2th June, and about the 22d 
or 23d, they put away the master. Greene 
and Wilson were employed to fish for the com- 
pany, and being at sea combined to steal away 
the shallope, but at last resolved to take away 
the ship, and put the master and other im- 
portant men into the shallope. 

He clears the now master of any foreknowl- 
J33 



HENRY HUDSON 

zdgz of this complot, bttt they relied on Ivett's 
judgment and skill. 

Edward Wilson, surgeon, knew nothing of 
the putting of the master out of the ship, till 
he saw him pinioned down before his cabin 
door, 

Francis Clemens, Adrian Motter and Bennet 
Mathues say the master was put out of the ship 
by the consent of all that were in health, in 
regard that their victualls were much wasted 
by him; some of those that were put away were 
directly against the master, and yet for safety 
of the rest put away with him, and all by 
those men that were slain principally. 

They all charge the master with wasting the 
victuals by a scuttle made out of his cabin into 
the hold, and it appears that he fed his favour- 
ites, as the surgeon, etc., and kept others at 
only ordinary allowance. All say that, to 
save seme from starving, they were content to 
put away so many, and that to most of them 
it was utterly unknown who should go, or 
who tarry, but as affection or rage did guide 
them" in that fury that were authors and 
executors of that plot. 

J34 



HENRY HUDSON 

Instance & Prize Records* (High Court of 
Admiralty) ♦ Examinations, he* Series I* 
VoL 42. I6n-I2 to 1614. 

Die Sabbto XXV<° January 1611. 

EDWARD WILLSON, of Portesmouth 
Surgion aged xxij yeares sworne and examined 
before the Right Wor" M^ [Master] Doctor 
Trevor Judge of His Matyes High Court of the 
Admiltye concerninge his late beinge at sea in 
the Discovery of London whereof Henry Hud- 
son was M' for the Northwest discovery sayth 
as followeth. 

Being demaunded whether he was one of the 
companie of the Discovery wherof Henry Hud- 
son was M' for the Northwest passage saythe 
by vertue of his oathe that he was Surgion of 
the said Shipp the said voyadge. 

Beinge asked further whether there was not a 
mutynie in the said Shipp the said voyadge by 
some of the companie of the said Shipp against 
the M', and of the manner and occasion thereof 
and by whome saythe that their victualls were 
soe scante that they had but two quartes of 
meale allowed to serve xxij men for a day, 
and that the M' had bread and cheese and 
aquavite in his cabon and called some of the 
135 



HENRY HUDSON 

companie whome he favoured to eate and 
drinke with him in his cabon whereuppon those 
that had nothinge did grudge and mutynye 
both against the M' and those that he gave 
bread and drinke «nto, the begynning whereof 
was thtts viz^- One William Willson then 
Boateswayne of the said shipp b«t since slayne 
by the salvages went «p to Phillipp Staffe the 
M'* Mate and asked him the reason why the 
M' should soe favour to give meate to some of 
the companie, and not the rest whoe aunswer- 
ed that it was necessary that some of them 
should be kepte upp Whereuppon Willson 
went downe agayne and told one Henry Greene 
what the said Phillipp Staffe had said to the 
said Willson Whereuppon they with others 
consented together and agreed to pynion him 
the said M' and one John Kinge whoe was 
Quarter M' and put them into a shallopp and 
Phillipp Staffe mighte have stayed still in the 
shipp but he would voluntarilie goe into the 
said shallopp for love of the M' uppon condi- 
tion that they would give him his clothes 
(which he had) there was allso six more besides 
the other three putt into the said shallopp 
whoe thinkeinge that they were onely put into 
the shallopp to keepe the said Hudson the M' 
136 



I 



HENRY HUDSON 

and Kinge till the victuals were a sharinge went 
out willinglie but afterwards findinge that the 
compame in the shipp would not suffer them 
to come agayne into the shipp they desyred 
that they mighte have their cloathes and soe 
pte of them was delivered them, and the rest of 
their apparell was soulde at the mayne mast 
to them that would give most for them and an 
inventory of every mans pticuler goodes was 
made and their money was paid by Mr Allin 
Gary to their friendes heere in England and 
deducted out of their wages that soe boughte 
them when they came into England, 

Beinge asked whoe were the pties that con- 
sented to this mutynie saythe he knoweth not 
otherwise then before he hath deposed savinge 
he saythe by vertue of his oathe that this exact 
never knewe thereof till the M^ was brought 
downe pynioned and sett downe before this 
eaxtes cabon and then this examinate looked 
out and asked him what he ayled and he said 
that he was pynioned and then this exate 
would have come out of his cabon to have 
gotten some victualls amongest them and they 
that had bounde the M' said to this exate that 
yf he were well he should keepe himselfe soe 
and further saythe that neither did Silvanus 
J37 



HENRY HUDSON 

Bond Nicholas Simmes and Frances Clements 
consente to this practize against the M' of this 
exates knowledge, 

Beinge demawnded whether he knoweth that 
the Hollanders have an intent to goe forthe 
tippon a discovery to the said Northwest pas- 
sadge and whether they have anie card [chart] 
delivered them concerninge the said discovery 
saythe that this exate for his parte never gave 
them anie card or knowledge of the said dis- 
covery but he hath heard saye that they in- 
tend sttch a voyadge and more he cannot saye 
savinge that some gentlemen and merchants 
of London that are interessed in this discovery 
have shewed divers cardes abroad w'^'^ happelie 
might come to some of their knowledge, 

Beinge asked further whither there bee a 
passadge throughe there he saythe that by all 
likeliehood there is by reason of the tyde of 
flood came out of the westerne ptes and the 
tyde of ebbe out of the easterne which may bee 
easely discovered yf such may bee imployed 
as have beene acquainted with the voyadge 
and knoweth the manner of the ice but in com- 
inge backe agayne they keepinge the northerne 
most land aboard found little or noe ice in the 
passadge* 

J38 



HENRY HUDSON 

Beinge asked what became of the said Hud- 
son the M' and the rest of the companie that 
were put into the shallopp saythe that they 
put out sayle and followed after them that 
were in the shipp the space of halfe an houre 
and when they sawe the shipp put one [on] more 
sayle and that they could not f ollowe them then 
they putt in for the shoare and soe they lost 
sighte of them and never heard of them since 
And more he cannot depose. 
Rich: Trevor. Edw: Willsonn. 

I certify that the foregoing is a true and 
authentic copy. 

J. F. Handcock, 
Assistant-Keeper of the Public Records 
London, 9th June, 1909. 



Admiralty Court. Oyer and Terminer. 6. 

No. 2 cannot be found. The bundle com- 
mences at present with No. 8. 

No. 77. True Bill found for the trial of 
Robert Bileth alias BIythe, late of the precinct 
of St. Katherine next the Tower of London, 
CO. Middlesex, mariner, Abacucke Prickett, 
late of the city of London, haberdasher, Ed- 
J39 



HENRY HUDSON 

ward Wilson of the same, barber-surgeon, 
Adrian Matter, late of Ratcliffe, Middlesex, 
mariner; Silvanus Bonde, of London, cooper, 
and Nicholas Sims, late of Wapping, sailor, to 
be indicted for having, on 22 June 9 James I, 
in a certain ship called The Discovery of the 
port of London, then being on the high sea near 
Hudson's Straits in the parts of America, pin- 
ioned the arms of Henry Hudson, late of the 
said precinct of St. Katherine, mariner, then 
master of the said ship The Discovery, and 
putting him thus bound, together with John 
Hudson, his son, Arnold Ladley, John Kinge, 
Michael Butt, Thomas "Woodhouse, Philip 
Staffe, Adam Moore and Sidrach Fanner, 
mariners of the said ship, into a shallop, with- 
out food, drink, fire, clothing or any neces- 
saries, and then maliciously abandoning them, 
so that they came thereby to their death and 
miserably perished. [Latin. Not dated.] 



Admiralty. Oyer and Terminer. 4J. 

[Msirad] 

Friday 7 February, J6J6 [O.S.] 

Abacucke Prickett, of London, haberdasher, 
examined, says that Henry Hudson, John Hud- 
MO 



HENRY HUDSON 

son, Thomas Widowes, Philip Staffe, John 
Kingc, Michael Bttrte, Sidrach Fanner, Adrian 
Moore and John Ladley, mariners of the Dis- 
covery in the voyage for finding out the N, W. 
passage, about 6 years past, were put out of 
the ship by force into the Shallop in the strait 
called Hudson's Strait in America, by Henry 
Grene, John Thomas, John Wilson, Michael 
Pearce, and others, by reason they were sick 
and victuals wanted, ** under account ** [u e*, 
if rations from the existing scant store were 
served out equally] they should starve for 
want of food if all the company should return 
home in the ship, Philip Staffe went out of 
the ship of his own accord, for the love he bare 
to the said Hudson, who was thrust out of the 
ship, Grene, with U or 12 more of the com- 
pany, sailed away with the Discovery, leaving 
Hudson and the rest in the shallop in the 
month of June in the ice. What became of 
them he knows not. He was lame in his legs 
at the time, and unable to stand. He greatly 
lamented the d^^dt and had no hand in it. 
Hudson and Staffe were the best friends he 
had in the ship. 

About five weeks after the said ship came 
to Sir Dudley Digges Island. Here Grene, 
141 



HENRY HUDSON 

Wilson, Thomast Pearse and Adrian Mottter 
would needs go ashore to trade with the 
savages, and were betrayed and set upon by the 
savages, and all of them sore wounded, yet 
recovered the boat before they died* Grene, 
coming into the boat, died presently, Wilson, 
Thomas and Pearse were taken into the ship, 
and died a few hours afterwards, two of them 
having had their bowels cut out. The blood 
upon the clothes brought home was the blood 
of these persons so wounded and slain by the 
savages, and no other. 

There ^ was falling out between Grene and 
Hudson the master, and between Wilson the 
surgeon and Hudson, and between Staf fe and 
Hudson, but no mutiny was in question, until 
of a sudden the said Grene and his consorts 
forced the said Hudson and the rest into the 
shallop, and left them in the ice. 

The chests of Hudson and the rest were 
opened, and their clothes, and such things as 
they had, inventoried and sold by Grene and 
the others, and some of the clothes were worn. 

Thomas Widowes was thrust out of the ship 
into the shallop, but whether he willed them 
take his keys and share his goods, to save his 
life, this examinate knoweth not. 
J42 



HENRY HUDSON 

At the putting out of the men, the ship*s 
carpenter [Staffe] asked the company if they 
would be [wished to be] hanged, when they 
came to England. 

He does not know whether the carpenter is 
dead or alive, for he never saw him since he 
was put out into the shallop. 

No shot was made at Hudson or any of them 
nor any hurt done them, that he knows. 

He did not see Hudson bound, but heard 
that Wilson pinioned his arms, when he was 
put into the shallop. But, when he was in the 
shallop, this exanlinate saw him in a motley 
gown at liberty, and they spoke together, 
Hudson saying: It is that villain Ivott [Juet], 
that hath undone us; and he answered: No, 
it is Grene that hath done all this villainy. 

It is true that Grene, Wilson and Thomas 
had consultation together to turn pirates, and 
so he thinks they would have done, had they 
not been slain. 

There was no watchword given, but Grene, 
Wilson, Thomas and Bennett watched the 
master, when he came out of his cabin, and 
forced him over board into the shallop, and 
then they put out the rest, being sick 
men. 

J43 



HENRY HUDSON 

He told Sir Thomas Smith the truth, as to 
how Hudson and the rest were turned out of 
the ship» 

He told the masters of the Trinity-house 
the truth of the business, but never knew or 
heard that the masters said they deserved to 
be hanged for the same. 

They were not victualled with rabbits or 
partridges before Hudson and the rest were 
turned into the shallop, nor after. 

There was no mutiny otherwise than as 
aforesaid, they were turned out only for want 
of victuals, as far as he knows. 

He does not know the handwriting of 
Thomas Widowes. He, for his part, made no 
means to hinder any proceedings that might 
have been taken against them. 

(Signed) ABACOOKE PERIKET. 

[On the same day,] 

Robert Bilett, of St. Katherine*s, mariner, 
examined, saith that, upon a discontent 
amongst the company of the ship the Discov- 
ery in the finding out of the N. W. passage, 
by occasion of the want of victualls, Henry 
Grene, being the principal, together with John 
144 



I 



HENRY HUDSON 

Thomas, "William Wilson, Robert Ivett [Jtiet] 
and Michael Pearse, determined to shift the 
company t and thereupon Henry Hudson, the 
master, was by force pttt into the shallop, and 
8 or 9 more were commanded to go into the 
shallop to the master, which they did^ this 
examinate thinking this cottrse was taken only 
to search the master's cabin and the ship for 
victttalls, which the said Grene and others 
thought the ma,ster concealed from the com- 
pany to serve his own turn* But, when they 
were in the shallop, Grene and the rest would 
not suffer them to come any more on board 
the ship, so Hudson and the rest in the shallop 
went away to the southward, and the ship 
came to the eastward, and the one never saw 
the other since. What is otherwise become 
of them be knoweth not* 

He says that the men went ashore (as above) 
to get victuals; and from their wounds the 
cabins, beds and clothes were made bloody* 

There was discontent amongst the company, 
but no mutiny to his knowledge, until the said 
Grene and his associates turned the master 
and the rest into the shallop. 

He heard of no mutiny " till overnight that 
Hudson and the rest were [to bej put into the 
J45 



HENRY HUDSON 

shallop the next day/* and this examinate and 
M'. Prickett perstiaded the crew to the contrary, 
and Grene answered the master was resolved 
to overtrowe all, and therefore he and his 
friends would shift for themselves* 

Stich clothes as were left behind in the ship by 
Hudson and his associates were sold, and worn 
by some of the company that wanted clothes. 

The ship's carpenter never used such 
speeches, to his knowledge, [This seems to 
refer to Staffers question, ** Would they be 
hanged when they came to England?*'] 

Pliilip Staffe, the carpenter, went into the 
shallop of his own accord, without any com- 
pulsion; whether he be dead or alive, or what 
has become of him, he knoweth not. 

No man, either drunk or sober, can report 
that Hudson and his associates were shot at 
after they were in the shallop, for there was no 
such thing done. 

He was under the deck, when Henry Hud- 
son was put out of the ship, so that he saw it 
not, nor knoweth whether he were bound or 
not, but saith he heard he was pinioned. 

Henry Grene, and two or three others, made 
a motion to turn pirates, and he believes they 
would have done, if they had lived, 
146 



1 



HENRY HUDSON 

He denieth that he took any ringe oat of 
Hudson's pocket, neither ever saw it except 
on his finger, nor knoweth what became of it» 

Such beds and clothes as were left in the 
ship, and not taken by Hudson and the rest 
into the shallop, were brought into England, 
because they left them behind in the ship. 

There was no watchword given, but Grene 
and the others commanded the said Hudson 
and the rest into the shallop, and upon that 
command they went. 

He told Sir Thomas Smith the manner how 
Hudson and the rest went from them, but what 
Sir Thomas said to their wives he knoweth not. 

There was no mutiny, but some discontent, 
amongst the company; they were not victual- 
led with any abundance of rabbits and part- 
ridges all the voyage. He doth not know the 
handwriting of Widowes, nor hath he seen 
what he put down in writing. 

(Signed) ROBERT BYLETH. 



Admiralty. Oyer and Terminer. 41. 

13 May, J6J7. 
Frances Clemence, of "Wapping, mariner, 
aged 40, says that Henry Hudson, the master, 
147 



HENRY HUDSON 

and 8 persons more were ptit otit of the Dis- 
covery into the shallop about 20 leagues from 
the place where they wintered, about 22d of 
June shall be 6 years in June next, as he heard 
from the rest of the company, for this examin- 
ate had his nails frozen off, and was very sick 
at the time. 

Henry Grene, William Wilson, John Thomas 
and Michael Pearse were slain on shore by 
the savages at Sir Dudley Digges Island, and 
Robert Ivett [ Juet] died at sea after they were 
slain. 

Philip Staffe, the ship's carpenter, was one 
of them who were put into the shallop with the 
master and the rest; whether he is dead or not, 
he knows not. 

The master displaced some of the crew, and 
put others in their room, but there was no 
mutiny that he knew of. 

Henry Hudson was pinioned, when he was 
put into the shallop. (With other answers as 
in the previous examinations.) 



THE END 



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